Wrong Approach?

 

I heard an interesting interview a couple of months ago, with a sociologist who teaches at a major university and studies mass murders. 

According to her, most of these events aren't hate crimes (or not only hate crimes) but suicide attempts. Which is why the perpetrator so often ends up dead, often by their own hand.

If true, this explains why efforts focused on hate groups/violent extremists/known terrorists have had little success at preventing these events and have provided little warning of them. Those efforts should definitely continue; they do help reduce the harm caused by such people in other ways. However, we need to add more and better attention to people who may be mentally ill in a specific way. (Yes, this is another plea for better mental health care in the US.)

There is also the problem that many of these attacks could have been predicted and maybe prevented if more people had just done their jobs, or just done them better. In several cases there were opportunities to do so which were missed, with one or more people in an important chain deciding not to do anything or to do the wrong thing. As just one example, in an interview the psychiatrist who was treating the man who became the Sandy Hook school shooter admitted he had misdiagnosed the man.

There is also the need for all of us to simply pay more attention to each other. To offer help or at least a sympathetic ear when we can. Let's be less self-absorbed and more active members of our communities. 

None of this will be easy. However, it will be easier than dealing with mass murders.