The untouchable caste is quite telling. It reveals the political blind spot enormously. The Republicans say it can't be guns, the Democrats say it can't be because of online extremist grooming.
Reality check: these incidents don't happen because of singular reasons. They happen because of multiple failings.
It will be a combination of factors; eg online grooming, lack of appropriate mental health support, availability of guns because ridicilously easy, parents being rigid in their faith and being homophobic, a traumatic incident that acts as a trigger.
If you take one of these factors away, the incident may well not have happened - that places the head burying on both the left and right as very much part of the problem - its not an either / or. Its a failure of society as a whole to spot the crisis in an individual.
Ultimately the individual remains to blame, but safeguarding is about providing that safety net to protect innocent parties. There is a failure of safe guarding thats occurred, almost certainly on multiple fronts.
Would this incident have happened in the UK? Well its much more unlikely, because someone under psychiatric care couldn't easily stockpile seven guns. Even where this goes wrong, there's a different response. There was a recent case where there was a spree killing involving a man who was recently given his gun licence back - and our society is now looking at this decision closely precisely because there is a clear line of responsibility in a failure of safeguarding. This means that there is a mechanism to make changes to stop it happening again. This wouldn't happen in the US.
Equally, if its found to have a connection to online grooming / extremist trans activism, I do think the UK not being so split along political lines (certainly compared to even 12 months ago), we'd be more willing as a society to review and look at safeguarding failures. Certainly its starting to be taken seriously in schools by the government and I think we will start to see change before the next GE and even then I think we've passed the point where parents will allow roll back now. The momentum is there and we aren't confined by this religious stand off.
What really concerns me at this point, is the escalation in the openess in encouraging violence by trans extremists. We have always said on MN that the reaction of the narcassitic elements of the movement to being told no, would be this escalation, because that follows the pattern of male violence. And within that, its the continued lack of silence by people in authority to have a zero tolerance attitude to that. And thats STILL not happening. And thats where both the UK and US are going to remain vulnerable to potential incidents being legitimised.
I still think we are due another significant tragedy before the penny starts to drop about the extremist element which needs reining in and safeguarded against. Its there, as clear as day, if people were paying the attention they should rather than putting on their political blinkers are going 'well its not our fault, its the fault of x'.
And one of the most telling features of the trans activist movement is this constant culture of blame deflection - we've seen it with Mermaids in the UK quite magnificently, but they certainly are not the only ones guilty of that. This incident is being framed in the same way.
ALL movements that want to be respected and taken seriously, need to keep their own houses in order and know when to clear house of their own nutty elements for their own benefit. Transactivism really isn't prepared to do any level of self reflection because its so entrenched in its own sense of victimhood. Thats deeply deeply unhealthy.
For me I think the underlying issue then becomes about comorbid issues - why are autistic people drawn to the ideology, does the ideology work to make them part of society or to alienate them further, if they are alienated further what impact does it have on their mental health which might already be poor, if their mental health is poor are trans ideological beliefs which frame counselling to address unlying issues actively causing increased disengagment with appropriate care, do these transactivism extremists online prey on these vulnerabilities and groom kids and young adults in a way thats dangerous to the rest of society?
Thats certainly not saying that trans people = bad. Thats saying that the culture online surrounding transactivism is utterly toxic and its leaking into real world consequences. That is saying that absoluetely needs to be tackled head on. In many ways for the best interests of those vulnerable people who are trans identifying.
Instead we have this fucking dreadful narrative of the far right / christain right v poor little trans people who are totally victimised and innocent. Its so fucked in the head.
The police have stated that they will be making the manifesto of the shooter public. I fully expect more justifying of the murder of innocent kids as a result.
I grew up understanding its never as simple as 'bad v good' because of what I saw first hand as a 14 year old. People don't do bad things for no reason at all. There is always a massive backstory you have to unpick, piece by piece. But ultimately you don't solve the problem without both sides coming to a conclusion that they need to come together and work together in condeming violent behaviour - and THEN working back from that point on dismantling the multiple driving forces behind it. The ongoing Republican v Democratic clash on this, prevents any level of sanity prevailing. And that means we are doomed to a cycle of repeat and escalation until a tipping point is eventually hit. Fuck knows where that lies, if its not with the murder of six people including three kids.