According to police reports, the Illinois college shooter is yet another mental patient who "stopped taking medication and became erratic". This sanitized Reuters article fails to mention which psychotropic medication he was taking, but other sources have mentioned Paxil, a so-called "anti-depressant". Clearly, he was "erratic" long before this latest episode.

The SSRI family of drugs has a long list of documented side-effects, including "de-personalization" and "suicidal tendencies", which are magnified when the medication is suddenly discontinued. These drugs are enough to make an already unstable person go berserk and shoot up a classroom full of students -- as was the case at both Columbine and Virginia Tech.

Solution? Ban the drugs, keep the mental patients off the street, and establish a well-trained, well-armed, volunteer community defense force to protect public places at all times.