The targeted attack by a man with a shotgun at the offices of a newspaper in Maryland left 5 people dead and has left us with more questions about why these shootings seem to happen more and more.
This time it was an attack on a local newspaper that the shooter is said to have threatened in the past and a newspaper he once sued. One staffer at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis reportedly even once thought about seeking a restraining order against the guy over his threats against the paper.
Once again, this shooter is a white male, described as a loner and reclusive and whose Twitter account is believed to have included images of a gun pointed at someone’s head and multiple profanity-filled tweets.
The motive for this shooting appears to be the result of someone who was filled with anger or hate or some other irrational way of thinking and doing something that normal people don’t do, take a gun and start shooting people.
And this shooting is just the latest in a string that goes back for years now at a lot of different places, from workplaces to schools, to concerts to restaurants to military bases.
And the shooter is usually someone who has displayed disturbing behavior in their past that often has been noticed by others who may or may not have reported it.
So how do we prevent people like this from doing what they do? Will better mental health treatment do it? Will making it harder to get a gun do it? Will changing our culture that includes putting limits on what you can say on social media…and…outlawing violent video games do it?
These are the questions we ask. Again.
(Photo credit Getty Images)