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There have always been guns here. In fact there was a time when even machine guns weren’t banned. There’s always been racism. In fact there used to be more. There’s always been mental illness too. Yet mass shootings of this sort used to be unheard of, in spite of all that.
All of those things are factors. Ideologies matter. Tribalism matters. Militant extremism leads to bad things. We know all that. But there’s something else, clearly. Something that goes beyond nearly all of the standard things we blame.
I’m not saying I know what that thing is. I don’t. But I know that our answers are incomplete. We’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle. That much is obvious.
I think the internet probably has a lot to do with it. I’m not *blaming* the internet. But I am saying we should consider it as an important — and, crucially, very new — factor. 24 hour cable news doesn’t help. Our obsession with screens. All of these things desensitize.
That’s at the core of the problem, I think. We are desensitized. Numb. Bored. Despondent. Probably the fact that we live most of our lives in cyber space contributes to that. Just a thought. I don’t know. It’s something to think about at least.
