Like everyone else paying any attention, I’m struggling with the fall-out of the latest shootings. I say latest because it’s clear there will be more. My thoughts on the whole subject are gaining more strength as I think about it and as I read and learn more. I tend to not take a firm position on most things until I’ve thought through them pretty thoroughly, and then I tend to not change my mind until something (generally data-based) comes along and catches me full in the face.
This one is really tough. Really tough. I just can’t make myself stop thinking about what it means when a shooter goes to 1st-grade classrooms. It’s just too much.
Some say it’s guns. Some say it’s mental health. I say to those … “yes.” It is all that and a lot more.
The real question, though, is what to do. Nothing? I have my opinion. But I don’t have energy to rant on it now, and really, you just don’t want to hear it. But I’ll say this. Here’s a great post by Tobias Buckell that is chock full of great links you should follow. Spend 30 minutes reading it, and following the links and then following the links in those links.
Go there with open minds. Perhaps you’ll come to the same conclusion I have … or at least I think I have. We’ll see where my brain falls in the next few days.
Until then, here is a link to the names and pictures of the victims.