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It's natural for people to ask, "Why is this happening? What changed" when they see a trend like mass shootings. Guns themselves are not really a variable. People had comparable, or easier, access to firearms long before such crimes were committed with any frequency.
Some point to new technologies like social media and videogames as an obvious variable - things that simply did not exist in the past. That seems more like correlation than causation.
Of course, people want to know what the "on" switch for this kind of behavior was so they can switch it off. A straightforward cause or two would be comforting because a simple solution could be implemented quickly.
It's more likely that we're looking at numerous factors that degraded over a fairly long period of time and could not be easily reversed - not a switch that was thrown, but numerous holes that were dug and converged into a pit.
It will not be comforting to consider the role of factors like the deterioration of the family, the more difficult time children have socializing, or the snowball effect of mass killers who inspire other mass killers. None of those factors has a readily apparent "off" button.
If there's one thing all of the manifestoes seem to have in common, it's a combination of anger, contempt, and despair, some variation of "there's no more time to waste arguing with people too dumb to see I'm right."
There's a deadly combination of alienation, frustration, messianic arrogance, grievance, and heartlessness that combines into an explosive mixture. Patience and compassion are hard to teach if you don't start learning when you're very young. Maybe we should start there. /end
