Yeah, I think the mind games we try to play are a little weird anyway: Let's not give this guy the attention so cover your ears every time somebody is about to mention his name. I understand the sentiment, but there is something... juvenile?... about it.

I have always believed, and still believe in spite of the increasing frequency of these tragedies, that the road to fixing this problem is more truth, not less truth. The more completely and thoroughly we understand what is happening with these shootings, the political, sociological, and psychological dynamics of all the players involved, the better chance we have of eventually coming up with a real solution.

Yes, this means even an empathic understanding of the killers themselves and their motivations, because they are human beings too and our understanding cannot be complete without understanding them. Maybe I'm just a dirty hippie, but I just don't think further dehumanization of people who probably were dehumanized enough already in their formative years is going to discourage mass murder. I mean, these are people who already hate society, and our gut reaction to them confirms to them that the gulf between us and them is truly irreconcilable. What do you expect the outcome of that to be? We are more truly confirming that their role in life, their meaning in life, is to be public enemy. Believe it or not that is a meaning that a person can come to accept and adopt. And if anything the need to work harder to come up with a truly newsworthy attack is just going to make them more creative and probably more deadly.

I may be a dirty hippie but I think that ultimately the road to solving this problem is to understand ourselves more: specifically, to deeply remember what it felt like during parts of our life when we were utterly excluded from everything that seemed good and meaningful that was going on with the people around us. Because I get the impression that's what's going on with these people. Or at least went on with them at some critical point in their development and now they project it onto all of civilization.

That is obviously a long-term evolution, but in the meantime we can give the President's speech some consideration. As long as we can't help the desperate and angry, we can make them less dangerous.