Sorry, the U.S.A. is terrible at long term planning. If you cry foul at the latest knee-jerk reaction and posit a long-term solution instead, we'll get nothing. The short-term is all we've got.

For the long term the best thing to do is change the nature of the public debate on various issues (like what is happening now with drug legalization). Sadly, however, the Republicans have all plugged their ears when it comes to the "lamestream media", severely hampering the ability of public discourse, reason, and statistics to shape the direction of the country.

It sounds like this guy might have been mental:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Stylists-Lanza-never-spoke-made-no-eye-contact-4128792.php

...honestly, that article is waaaaaaaaayyy too vague to establish that someone is mental. That news clip basically described half the people i hung out with in highschool. Probably quite antisocial and depressed.

The guy probably was mental though or at least had a mental break though... Hence the shooting.

Food for thought on the topic of mental illness and violence from the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/health/a-misguided-focus-on-mental-illness-in-gun-control-debate.html

Walmart in Arizona allows customers to bring guns into the store. Interestingly, the only time anyone has ever been shot was in the parking lot.

Some points they brought up but couched in favorable language: people who are schizophrenic or bipolar are more than twice as likely to become violent, virtually all mass-killings in recent history have been caused by people who suffer from mental illnesses (ppd, schizophrenia), existing laws aren't working due to lax enforcement, and there is a lack of effective screening for mental illnesses (especially in youth).

But it's okay. Mass killings are so rare compared to ordinary gun crime that we shouldn't bother trying to prevent them.

Edit: My bad. I'm so used to skimming for the PR cookie cutter outline that I thought the Cato Institute paid for it. Turns out they agree with me. Hm.

That's kind of a larger issue of fixing the way we deal with mental health in general. If you have a way of fixing it, fantastic, but that's the challenge. Fixing it isn't a solution, it's the problem. Forget a couple dozen shooting victims, that could go a long way toward preventing thousands and thousands of suicides.

Maybe there'd be better mental health screening if there were better health screening, period.

Maybe parents shouldn't be allowed to pull their children out of school because the school wants them to seek treatment for their child.

Well, that would sure make medicaid a hell of a lot cheaper.

Better spent on social programs than the wars on drugs and terror by themselves. Or Re-banning already banned "Assault Weapons" no one you know can afford to own. Or attempting to ban the super high powered .223.