Sure, there are things that could have been done, but it's a lot easier to determine what things could have been done in hindsight. It's easier to see the things missed after you've discovered what the missed things were.
But anyway, I'd like to get into the discussion of "evil" a bit more. And this is probably in a different context than what we're discussing here. I'm talking about a general attitude I see that that just blames it on "evil" without going deeper. I don't think "evil" is a particularly helpful description of what's motivating these kids. It is in an overgeneralized sort of cop out.
Okay fine. Every instance of people doing bad things to other people is "evil". Yeah, so what now? How does that describe the pathology? We need an understanding deeper than "evil". We need something more deterministic. There IS a cause, and I suppose people who don't care to think of it any deeper than "evil" can be satisfied with shaking their heads and tsking and promoting their pet causes and boxed solutions.
Dude got pissed because he was turned down by a girl, so he shot her? WTF?
Okay. So, most people are conditioned to handle rejection, at least enough that they they don't try to shoot people when they're rejected. So what's different about this kid? That question doesn't appear to me so difficult to figure out that we have to give up and call "evil". The solution doesn't seem all that simple, but it seems reasonable to me that discovering the causes shouldn't be difficult, if we can be honest about it.
We're (adversarial "we're") not honest about it when we use these shootings to pitch solutions for political goals, rather than solutions for the actual problem.
The anti-gun zealots try to lay the moral outrage at the feet of the NRA/gun owners. If moral outrage has a legitimate group to blame, a much better case can be made that the blame for why we can't figure out what is going on with these kids, belongs at the feet of people who insist that the problem is their political foil. I don't think it's a societal problem. I think it's an individual human problem.
But activists can't allow a sane discussion of the problem because it always has to be about the foil. Regardless of the availability of guns, or fortifying schools, or arming teachers with guns, or law enforcement doing their jobs, or properly detecting the signs that someone is about to shoot a bunch of people, there's a reason why that 14 year old kid couldn't handle rejection. There's a reason why he thought that shooting the girl who rejected him was the solution.
That reason is deeper than simply "evil". It's deeper than simply banning guns. It's deeper than all those other solutions which at best only attempt to provide a better reaction. The problem is deeper than "evil", but it's more possible to discover the cause when we allow it to be framed as narrow as it is. A 14 year old dude shot a girl because she rejected him.
I wish there was a like button.
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