Mental Illness and Community Safety – Are they Mutually Exclusive?

As you are no doubt aware there have been multiple mass shootings in our country over the past few years. Hundreds of people have died or been victimized at the hands of people that they generally did not know. Many of the perpetrators of these crimes were found to suffer from a range of mental disturbances or mental illnesses (although some might also term acts of terrorism as meeting a level of mentally deviant behavior as well though not identified as readily as a mental illness).

Post a thoughtful and scholarly discussion of at least 150 words to the following:

What can communities do to protect their citizens from the dangers of such incidents? Can we prevent violence caused by mental health disturbances? Which should we be most concerned about – access to guns or untreated mental illness?