Another piece of shit decided he wanted to go out with a bang but didn’t have the common courtesy to go it alone. He took the lives of six people before taking his own and now everybody is clamoring for answers.
Predictably a lot of people are blaming America’s “weak” gun laws. The fact that this occurred in California should who how silly such arguments are. Others are blaming the lack of mental illness screenings. When somebody discovered an effective test for predicting future homicidal behavior please let me know. Until we have such tests the whole idea of mental illness screenings is pretty sketchy. I even found an article that blames the whole incident on misogyny. Because, you know, misogyny leads to murder sprees, or something.
The point is everybody is latching onto whatever piece of the puzzle be helps them push their agenda. But boiling this event down to pet issues misses the big picture, which is unfortunately so complex we’ll likely never fully understand it. All we know for certain is that the events of this murderer’s life combined with his unique mentality made for a lethal combination. I doubt any form of mental illness screening would catch somebody like this solely because the mentalities we consider to be illnesses often don’t show visible signs until a horrible deed has already been committed.
I know it’s a natural reaction to want to do something to prevent horrible deeds from happening in the future. But events perpetrated by a single individual are hard to stop because the dangerous factor is a single individual. As there are roughly seven billion individuals on this planet it’s almost impossible to create a mechanism to stop the darker inhibitions of each and every one of them. Some will claim that such a statement is defeatist in nature and it probably is. But there are things that we as a species cannot do. We cannot propel ourselves to the moon under my own power and we cannot stop individuals for doing heinous things. It sucks but it’s reality.
This was a situation though in which the authorities were notified he was on the side of crazy beforehand and they did not pursue it beyond an interview which any sociopath or psychopath worth their salt can fake their way through.
I’d like to know why people aren’t blaming California’s weak assault-knife laws?