A U.S. Park Police helicopter removes a man from the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, September 16. At least 12 people were killed in a shooting rampage, according to Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier. 
Connecticut State Police evacuate children from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012. Adam Lanza opened fire in the school, killing 20 children and six adults before killing himself. Police say he also shot and killed his mother in her Newtown home. 
James Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to opening fire July 20, 2012, at the Century Aurora 16 theater in Aurora, Colorado, during the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises." Twelve people were killed and dozens were wounded. Holmes is charged with 142 counts, including first-degree murder. His trial is scheduled to begin in February 2014. 
A military jury convicted Army Maj. Nidal Hasan on Friday, August 23, of 13 counts of premeditated murder in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. During the November 5, 2009 shooting, 13 people died and 32 were injured. 
Jiverly Wong shot and killed 13 people at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, before turning the gun on himself on April 3, 2009, police say. Four other people were injured at the immigration center shooting. Wong had been taking English classes at the center. 
Pallbearers carry a casket of one of Michael McLendon's 10 victims. McLendon shot and killed his mother in her Kingston, Alabama, home, before shooting his aunt, uncle, grandparents and five more people. He shot and killed himself in Samson, Alabama, on March 10, 2009. McClendon left a note saying he put his mother "out of her misery." 
Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree on the campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, on April 16, 2007. Cho killed two people at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and, after chaining the doors closed, killed another 30 at Norris Hall, home to the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department. He wounded 17 people before killing himself. It is the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. 
Mark Barton walked into two Atlanta trading firms on July 29, 1999, and fired shots, leaving nine dead and 13 wounded, police say. Hours later police found Barton at a gas station in Acworth, Georgia, where he pulled a gun and killed himself. The day before Barton had bludgeoned his wife and his two children in their Stockbridge, Georgia, apartment, police say. The children's birth mother and grandmother had been murdered six years earlier in Alabama. Barton was questioned but never charged in that crime. 
Eric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, armed with bombs and guns. The students killed 13 and wounded 23 before killing themselves. 
George Hennard crashed his pickup through the plate glass window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991, before fatally shooting 23 people and committing suicide. 
James Huberty shot and killed 21 people, including children, at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, on July 18, 1984. A police sharpshooter killed Huberty an hour after the rampage began. 
Prison guard George Banks is led through the Luzerne County courthouse in 1985. Banks killed 13 people, including five of his children, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on September 25, 1982. He was sentenced to death in 1993 and received a stay of execution in 2004. His death sentence was overturned in 2010. 
Officers carry victims across the University of Texas at Austin campus after Charles Joseph Whitman opened fire from the school's tower, killing 16 people and wounding 30. Police officers shot and killed Whitman, who had killed his mother and wife earlier in the day. 
Howard Unruh, a World War II veteran, shot and killed 13 of his neighbors on September 5, 1949, In Camden, New Jersey. Unruh barricaded himself in his house after the shooting. Police overpowered him the next day. He was ruled criminally insane and committed to a state mental institution. 
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- David Frum: The good news, a year after Newton, is growing state spending on mentally ill
- Yet such worthy efforts won't stop some troubled people from gun violence, he says
- Frum: Superabundance of guns in the U.S. puts weapons in easy reach
Editor's note: David Frum, a CNN contributor, is a contributing editor at The Daily Beast. He is the author of eight books, including a new novel, "Patriots," and a post-election e-book, "Why Romney Lost." Frum was a special assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002.
(CNN) -- Here's some good news, a year after Newtown:
States have been restoring funds for mental health coverage. States are the main providers of mental health services. In the recession of 2008-2009, the states together cut $1.8 billion from mental health budgets, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group.
Over the past year, 36 states have added money back. Texas just legislated the largest increase in mental health coverage in the state's history, $259 million more over the next two years than over the previous two. Private dollars may soon flow, too: the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to expand their coverage of mental health problems.
States have passed laws intended to prevent the mentally ill from doing harm. New York adopted the most sweeping legislation. The NYSAFE Act, as it's known, requires all mental health professionals to report patients who, in the professional's opinion, seem likely to present a risk of serious harm to themselves or others. State police can then check these reports and deny or revoke a gun license.
$100 million for mental health funding 
Sandy Hook remembers 
Newtown mom reflects on anniversary Connecticut and Colorado have also stiffened mental health reporting requirements.
Now the sobering news:
Mental health professionals can't report dangerous people if they don't come into contact with them in the first place. Professionals are in short supply. Insurance coverage has historically been thin. Those who most need mental health help are precisely those least likely to seek or accept it.
Even if the dangerous mentally ill can be identified, the facilities to protect society have been reduced to desperate inadequacy. In 1959, state mental hospitals housed about 559,000 patients. A generation later, the mental hospital population had dwindled to 70,000 people. This trend is called "deinstitutionalization," but that's an inapt term.
The mentally ill do often end up inside institutions: prisons. Almost 1.3 million mentally ill people are held in prisons and jails. Few of these people are adequately treated, and they often emerge more troubled and dangerous.
Even if authorities can identify a potentially dangerous mentally ill person and do revoke that person's gun license, the sheer superabundance of guns in the United States puts weapons in easy reach of anyone who wants them. The guns that Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook were bought by his mother, who could have passed any background check.
A society with a lot of guns is going to have a lot of shootings, no matter what else it does for the mentally ill -- especially since the most common form of gun violence is not homicide but suicide. The self-slaughter of a chronically depressed person is a mental health failure, too.
A stronger mental health system is not an alternative to gun safety laws. It must operate in tandem with them. That lesson was written in blood at Newtown, yet it remains unlearned to this day.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum.
