Mass Shootings: Root & Branch

Whenever a mass shooting occurs, especially at a school, two questions go through my head:

1) What kind of prescription medication was the shooter taking?

2) What kind of family life did the shooter have?

It seems like the majority of time I can answer these questions without bothering to read the coverage.

Firearms are, fundamentally speaking, tools.  Tools do their masters' bidding, enabling those who wield them effectively to accomplish their goals or ends more efficiently.  These goals can be productive (building houses, preparing food, etc.) or destructive (theft, murder, etc.).  Throughout history firearms have been used for many productive purposes, especially hunting and self-defense (individually and nationally).

This concept is not difficult to understand.  We all recognize it in our daily lives.  Many medicines and supplements are poisons if taken in excessive dosages, many household products can be deadly if not used carefully, many machines in factories can lead to injury or death, and so on and so forth.  

Inanimate objects are what we make of them.  

The problem, then, is not the tool, but the design or goal in the heart or mind of the individual wielding the tool.  Subsequently, the solution must address the actual problem that lies behind the act, not an incidental tool used in the act.  Treating symptoms will never heal the disease.  In other words, the answer to preventing mass murder will never be banning a tool.  If you remove one tool from the hands of the criminal hell-bent on bloodshed, another tool will take its place.  Evil men will stop at nothing to accomplish their goals, and firearms are far from the only tool available to effect the goal of mass casualties (remember the OKC bombing?).

This leads us back to where we started.  What factors seem to connect all these mass murders?  If we investigate those factors and work to remediate them, perhaps we will find some success in eliminating the end result to which they lead.

Except, maybe we can't.  Maybe we can't because we don't really want to.  Maybe as a culture we are not willing to make the changes required to address the real problem.  

We'd rather medicate, legislate, and fornicate.