"People who knew him"

Do police deal with mentally ill people almost every day? I think so. Now our latest mentally ill mass murderer is Aaron Alexis. "People who knew him" say that he has long been paranoid, delusional, and suffering from hallucinations. He called police in Newport, Rhode Island on August 6 to complain about people following him. The brilliant police officer told him to stay away from people who were following him, and closed the case.

On Monday, Mr. Alexis entered the Navy Yard, a secure military facility near the Capitol, killing at least 12 people before he was fatally shot by the authorities. The police say Mr. Alexis, 34, acted alone. On Tuesday a full list of victims’ names was released.

And the military? You know, the military that also coddled Major Hasan?

Navy officials said that although he had shown a “pattern of misbehavior,” which included insubordination and unauthorized absences, Mr. Alexis was given an honorable discharge from the military in January 2011.

The police and the military: our two expert institutions in dealing with mentally ill people.

Mr. Alexis had been arrested at least three times during the past decade by civilian authorities, twice for weapons violations.

Perhaps we should add our courts to the list of institutions who are experts in dealing with dangerous mentally ill people?

This guy got around. From Rhode Island to Seattle, to Fort Worth to Atlanta, and back to our nation's capital.

Mr. Alexis, according to a Seattle police report, had been arrested for shooting the right and left rear tires of another man’s vehicle with a .45-caliber pistol before firing a shot into the air. Mr. Alexis described the incident to detectives as an anger-fueled “blackout,” according to the report.

Mr. Alexis had also been arrested in Fort Worth in 2010 for discharging a firearm after an upstairs neighbor said he had confronted her in the parking lot about making too much noise, according to a Fort Worth police report.

In 2008, he had been arrested outside Atlanta for disorderly conduct related to a dispute inside a nightclub, according to a police report from DeKalb County. No weapon was involved in that incident, according to the police.

Oh, and did I mention that Mr. Alexis had a secret clearance from the Defense Department? In the past few months he has worked at naval facilities in

Maryland, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia.

Update: Many "people who knew him" are saying Alexis was "nice." Proving Matt Walsh's point that people can often be "nice" and evil.