After the Maine massacre, we are hearing the familiar response to a mass shooting by a mentally ill man, which is to deprive everyone of their civil rights. The reality is that if you have violent and dangerous people on the loose, they will get their hands on guns or other weapons, regardless of whatever laws there are. Gun control doesn’t stop killers, it stops people from protecting themselves. If you want to stop mentally unstable mass shooters, institutionalize them.

A lot of seriously mentally ill people desperately need help, some even request it, but they don’t get it.

A young Oklahoma mom has been found dead on a barge on the Mississippi River — days after she was arrested for repeatedly calling 911 pleading for help.

Hailey Silas’ body was found about 7 a.m. Saturday while the barge’s crew was performing an inspection while traveling the Mississippi River near Shelby Forest in Tennessee, WREG reported.

Less than a week earlier, the 22-year-old mom was arrested for calling 911 several times Sunday from a gas station across from Southland Casino, according to the outlet.

She reportedly asked authorities to give her a ride out of West Memphis, Arkansas, because she was scared of something and was having a “panic attack.”

After Silas was taken to a station in handcuffs, she asked to talk to her parents, saying she was scared and confused, according to WREG.

It was not immediately clear what she was scared of, but the young mom also asked to be taken to a “psych ward,” the report said.

She pleaded guilty on Wednesday last week to a misdemeanor of communicating a false alarm and was given a suspended sentence of time served, according to records cited by the outlet.

We sure solved that one.

Bizarrely, we would rather arrest people who are requesting to be taken to a psych ward, then take them to a psych ward. There’s a persistent bias against institutionalization in America, as opposed to Europe, fed by movies featuring patients being abused within the system. As a result, we have crazies wandering the streets and other crazies shooting up bowling alleys.

Do we have a ‘homeless problem’ or a ‘mass shooter’ problem or a mental illness problem? Lefties prefer the former because the myth of a homeless problem allows them to attack capitalism and the latter allows them to dismantle civil rights. None of it actually addresses the real underlying problems. And none of it makes things better.

The refusal to institutionalize the mentally ill has wrecked our cities and cost a lot of lives. It’s time to rethink it.