The Santa Barbara shooting, as every public shooting before it, raised questions as to how, if at all, society could have prevented it.

After posting online threats, Elliot Rodgers, who had a history of mental illness, obtained multiple firearms and killed six students and injured several others before killing himself, causing many to question the balance between individual rights — to own a gun, to speak freely, to maintain doctor-patient confidentiality — and the larger community's right to safety.

In an attempt to solve the problem, Congressman Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), known as the only clinical psychiatrist in Congress, reasserted a mental health reform bill that he introduced last year.

The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act would allow professionals to share information on patients with serious mental illness with families without consent, make federal grants conditional based on whether states enact assisted outpatient treatment (AOT), a legal treatment-without-consent for certain cases, and expand involuntary inpatient treatment to include not only those who pose imminent threat, but also anyone who, "lacks capacity to fully understand or lacks judgement to make informed decisions regarding his or her need for treatment."

Mental health professionals were split of the bill that could cast sweeping reforms across the health community. American Psychiatric Association backed the bill while other organizations, like Mental Health America, rejected aspects of the bill, including the broadening definition of what situations legitimize involuntary treatment, arguing that it would minimize the, "dignity, autonomy and self-determination of persons affect by mental health conditions."

Despite criticism, the controversial bill has attracted 87 cosigners from both parties. Murphy maintains that the shooting tragedies are preventable while others argue that public shootings are rare events that professionals cannot predict, let alone prevent. That was the point that Richard Friedman, Psychopharmacology Director at Cornell University, made in a New York Times opinion piece this week.

"We have always had — and always will have — Adam Lanzas and Elliot Rodgers," Friedman wrote.