The Left threw away a perfectly functional society because Leftism is perfect and our perfectly functional society was clearly inferior to what they had in their head.

Therefore, we invented a scandal to close the asylum system, completely change our approach to mental health to be geared solely towards out-patient treatment, and intentionally let people roam the streets until they committed a crime and were medicated in prison. Which you should be thankful for, because the mental health institutions that replaced the asylum system are worse than prisons, and you are less likely to ever get out.

In the Left's quest to make the world perfect, we became cruel to everyone by abandoning the sick to the streets until they hurt someone, then we threw them away in an oubliette we call "treatment". Did they ever address this problem once in 70 years? Absolutely not. Instead, they declared it a success, and then decreed that guns are the problem and not their horrifically incompetent management of the mental health systems.