An hour ago, I was lying in bed looking occasionally at news headlines on my iPhone. The "active shooter" at last night's horrible murder spree in Thousand Oaks had not been identified and I was thinking how so many people are waiting for that info to see if it can be of any use to them. Like if it turns out he's a Muslim, those who want to ban or restrict Muslims will be happy they have that new little weapon to add to their arsenal. Or if he's a militant Vegan, that could be useful to any hostile carnivores or maybe to the meat industry.
And of course, these incidents are always helpful to the cause of those who simply want to make guns — especially automatic and semi-automatic weapons — harder to acquire. Since I'm more or less on their side, I can temper my horror at the news with a sliver of silver lining and think, "Well, maybe this will convince more people we need to do something about guns." Which is a kind of baseless optimism because it never does. (Actually, it isn't so much a matter of convincing more people we should do something. It's a matter of convincing them to do something, which is not the same thing. I do not expect this to happen in my lifetime.)
So now they just said the shooter was "a former Marine who may have had PTSD." I'm not sure what anyone can do with that but someone will try.
This has been Today's Post About Yesterday's Mass Shooting. Stay tuned for the next installment of Today's Post About Yesterday's Mass Shooting…coming sooner than you'd like to your computer screen.