Boulder: I know only two things..

[Bobstandard]

When my wife told me that there had been a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, a place where we lived once long ago, I knew that gun violence tragedy had struck again. When she told me that the gunman had been taken alive, I knew he was white.

She got mad at me a week ago when she told me about the Atlanta Asian hate crime murders. She said that the shooter had been taken alive, and I said, “he’s a white guy, right?”

“You don’t know that,” she said. “Why would you say that?”

I’m a white guy. She’s a white woman. She believes, way more than me, that people are are the same where ever you go, whatever their color, creed, lived experience. (Yup. Acknowledged. The definition of white privilege). We’ve lived in a lot of places and traveled to many more where meeting the people on the way make it seem that she’s right. But we’re in gun happy America. I’m so sorry that she’s again confronted with the truth that she’s wrong.

[Bobstandard]

1. A third thing: It's too early, right?

We always hear from the gun humpers that it’s too early after a tragedy like this to talk about curbs on access to guns. That this time is too emotionally charged to reasonably discuss something “so complicated” as “second amendment rights”. So we never get to the discussion, which, among reasonable people, can only end one way—with serious gun control laws.

[Budi]

2. K & R Thank You!

[Mr.Bill]

6. Yes, we wouldn't want to

"politicize" the deaths of the innocent victims.

[modrepub]

7. It's The Anger

Mass shootings are bad but there's also a lot of violence perpetrated against women for no other reason than who they are. This anger that makes people do unspeakable things has been around for a long long time. Sometimes I think if we had some sort of emergency hot line (like suicide prevention or gambling ones) some of this might be avoided. Why not a gun hotline funded from gun sales?

It's crazy I know, but no one seems to want to confront the kind of anger that drives people to do these things. If we don't figure out why folks reach this breaking point and offer sincere professional help when they do or teach proper coping mechanisms this cycle just repeats. Take the guns away then people go to knives or some other object. Yea there will be less damage but even 1 person hurt is too many.

[msongs]

3. we know from video he has a bald spot nt

[RockRaven]

4. There's another thing you knew, but sorta passed over without taking credit for knowing it.

"He's a white guy, right?" He's a HE.

The overwhelming majority of murders are committed by men. The overwhelming majority of shootings are committed by men. The overwhelming majority of mass shootings are committed by men (96%, according to a show I listened to this morning).

More than any other thing (except perhaps gun access, which is sort of definitional given the crime involved) the single biggest commonality of mass shooters is their gender.

American men are fucked up -- or, at least, are a group which contains a concentration of way too many fucked up group members. And I say that as one of them.

[Bobstandard]

5. Agreed. I said "white guy" and left it to you..

I called him a white guy and left it to someone like you to fill in the details. Thanks. I’m too heartsick and sick of it to get it all down here. Working together we may one day..