Okay, while there's the general profile of "white male" shooters, I think what a lot of people are trying to get at is that a lot of the time the entitled white guys who commit mass shootings have some sort of victim complex that they cite. Like, they are part of groups/post thing about being a victim as white and/or a man. And people are scared because this guy didn't seem like that type of entitled white guy. Like, clearly he was, but they're worried that we can't trace his politics/thinking
Forgive my needs to be a geek here, but I’m going to use a villain analogy here to explain what I think you’re saying. I know it oversimplifies stuff, but we need a way to discuss this so people who don’t get all into it can understand.
Let’s talk about this guy as a supervillain (a person with a body count of +10).
What do all villains need? A story, something that motivates them into doing the crime they are about to commit. People are looking into his origin story to find a pattern that they can exploit.
If this was a supervillain of color, then they can demonize factors as religion (Muslims), causes, political beliefs, activism and link it to their color. This is where racism benefits them because they can “storify” that factor as an “other”. The Boston Marathon bombing is an example of that. When you look into the story and can connect it with a trait that is usually associated with people of color, then you will be able to say “see, this is a bad idea. See what happens when you don’t talk about American values and live the American lifestyle and ideals? You become this and we need to stop THIS from spreading.”
However, with no particular ideal to latch on to, they are basically trying a lot of ideas to see what sticks. Even without all the facts. Even WITH facts.
But no one is asking “can you stop people from being villains” because that’s a complicated answer that requires a lot of unfolding. They are asking “how do we stop a certain idea from manifesting into what we consider normal” aka… how do we stop the next WHITE mass shooter?
We’re asking the wrong questions, to be honest. We are asking “how do we stop people from becoming villains” and the answer to that is “well, it’s complicated”. We should be asking “how do we stop creating supervillains?” And the answer should be “let’s remove the factors to prevent them from becoming supervillains and keep them as villains.”
We can predict villains. We can control villains. There’s always going to be harm and death with villains. So imagine if we give them the power to be more than just villains. We are having a hard time controlling the origin story, so we can’t always get villains under control. So we need to make it harder for them to become supervillains.
And the fact that we can’t even talk about this without a comic reference scares me.
