On Fort Hood

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 13.266% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

People come read essays for nice summaries, where they map out easy Buzzfeed-friendly solutions: How could we have avoided this tragedy? This simple solution will show you how!
And my honest answer is, “I don’t know.”
My initial gut reaction is to say that we need to get the soldiers more help, prioritize funding to veteran care.  But that’s because there are a lot of depressed veterans out there shooting themselves in the head, and I think they could use the help.  A guy who’s so far gone he feels like shooting people at random?
I don’t know what causes that.
I don’t even know if there’s a common cause.  Maybe the last shooter was crazy in an entirely different way.
And I think what a lot of people are doing now is taking their generic solutions for “Here’s how we make things a better world” and slapping them onto this repeated tragedy because heck, anything is better than doing nothing – so we’ve got guys saying we need soldiers to have easier access to guns on base, or less access to guns, or to change the way the media reports on these shootings, or to change the regulations on psychiatric evaluations or whatever else they’ve been pushing for all along….
…but me?  I’ll admit that this is completely outside my element.  I talk about writing and gaming and relationships, because I know a lot of writers and gamers and people who date.  I have yet, thank God, to even meet anyone so disturbed as to go on a shooting spree, let alone know enough of them intimately enough to start drawing conclusions about their lives.
And I think more funding to help our veterans couldn’t hurt, as I think maybe the feeling of isolation by soldiers hurts them, that sense that we’ve sent them to hell and then abandoned them.  But would that have prevented this shooting?  Or any other?
I don’t know.
I just don’t know.
 

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