That's the opinion of author and journalist Maureen Callahan whose opinion piece was recently published in the New York Post. Leading off with the shooting at Gilroy, CA., where the 19 year-old white male shooter was asked "why are you doing this" and his response "because I'm really angry" Callahan offers these sad but real insights:
1. There is a common thread - "From those mass shooters who have attacked the innocent before, we know it’s a specific strain of anger — deep, repressed, biblically vengeful — felt most commonly by young men, almost always white, who report feeling alienated, dispossessed, misunderstood, victimized and all too often rejected by women."
2. There are no safe places - "Their chosen outlet is the mass slaughter of innocents, carnage at places the rest of us once deemed safe — schools, hospitals, places of work and worship, concerts, carnivals — all meant to hold us hostage, in fear of the next reprisal we’re not responsible for and won’t see coming."
3. Their anger is fueled in the same pattern - "The ever-incubating mass shooter, these young men nurturing their anger through first-person shooter games, violent pornography, through racism and a fascination with guns and violence, is our greatest, most stubborn and pressing threat — more so, I would argue, than Islamic terrorism or Russian hacking or immigration or trade wars."
4. There needs to be a collective cultural response - " From the White House on down, to figuring out why young men in the world’s greatest, most prosperous country are so goddamn angry."
(Read her entire column at: www.nypost.com).
1. There is a common thread - "From those mass shooters who have attacked the innocent before, we know it’s a specific strain of anger — deep, repressed, biblically vengeful — felt most commonly by young men, almost always white, who report feeling alienated, dispossessed, misunderstood, victimized and all too often rejected by women."
2. There are no safe places - "Their chosen outlet is the mass slaughter of innocents, carnage at places the rest of us once deemed safe — schools, hospitals, places of work and worship, concerts, carnivals — all meant to hold us hostage, in fear of the next reprisal we’re not responsible for and won’t see coming."
3. Their anger is fueled in the same pattern - "The ever-incubating mass shooter, these young men nurturing their anger through first-person shooter games, violent pornography, through racism and a fascination with guns and violence, is our greatest, most stubborn and pressing threat — more so, I would argue, than Islamic terrorism or Russian hacking or immigration or trade wars."
4. There needs to be a collective cultural response - " From the White House on down, to figuring out why young men in the world’s greatest, most prosperous country are so goddamn angry."
(Read her entire column at: www.nypost.com).
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