Mass Shootings - The Difference Which Makes a Difference

Every developed country has violent films, music, and videogames.  Every city and town around the world includes people struggling with isolation, addiction, mental illness, and stress.  And most developed countries have legal access to abortion while also maintaining a secular form of government.  None of these factors are themselves closely linked to mass shootings.  None of them.  We should stop pretending otherwise.



1. Only the USA is led by a xenophobic bigot who has made white identity politics his central animating force in pronouncement and by policy, demonizing immigrants and vilifying Muslims.  Then, online forums like 8chan and Reddit's r/The_Donald radicalize angry, isolated young men - many of whom embrace Trump's xenophobia and bigotry, then carry out attacks on marginalized communities. Domestic terrorists are waging white identity politics which the GOP is fueling.

2. And only the USA has widespread availability of military style rifles and high capacity magazines to almost anyone.  These weapons do not themselves create the underlying conditions for a mass shooting, but absolutely do increase the severity of injuries and number of deaths in a matter of minutes.  The type of bullet wounds and the number of shots fired without reloading are both essential elements in the lethality of a rampage attack.  Mass shooters know this and almost always choose an AR-15 or similar variant for these reasons.



This is a uniquely American problem and it is getting worse for the two reasons I just mentioned.  Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't paying attention to the global data set and commonalities these trends reveal.

Dylann Roof and the Death Sentence

Buried beneath all the other breathless headlines, I just now read that "Dylann Roof has been sentenced to death for the June 2015 Charleston church slayings."

Stories like this actually remind me why I oppose capital punishment.

Roof was clearly lost and fell into all the wrong influences as an impressionable, isolated person. He deserves life imprisonment without parole to reflect on his choices and the opportunity to reconcile with his own moral failures.

Unfortunately, the government-sanctioned execution of Roof will stoke the flames of martyrdom in future angry young men just like him.  In their racist ideology, it will only validate their persecution complex.  Notoriety in death is often the outcome that rampage shooters desire.  In our pursuit of justice, we should not be so unwitting as to play into white power delusions about their imagined persecution.

By sentencing Dylann Roof to death, the US government will affirm that our response to killing people is... killing people. We should not want for further blood on our hands after the tragic shooting in Charleston. This is not what those slain church-goers who follow Christ would want nor what we as a society should accept as our moral standard.