The
                                  hunt for the political ideology driving each
                                  murder that makes the news obscures some key
                                  points.
                              One
                                  is that the shooter is almost always a man,
                                  even though women are equally capable of
                                  shooting, meaning that the ideology is one of
                                  masculinism.
                              Another
                                  is that the shooter, more often than not,
                                  shoots himself (and it may not make the news,
                                  but most often a shooter shoots only himself),
                                  which blows a rather large hole in the idea
                                  that he is working to advance some subgroup of
                                  people or some desired better world.
                              Another
                                  is that, to the extent that coherent thoughts
                                  are involved, every shooter shares the
                                  masculinist ideology that holds that anything
                                  good can come of shooting people — an ideology
                                  also shared with many non-shooters (including
                                  angry, violent individuals in places not
                                  saturated with guns and gun training and war
                                  veterans) and with many indirect shooters
                                  (including those ordering, funding,
                                  authorizing, and profiting from shooting or
                                  bombing Palestinian children or Venezuelan
                                        boaters,
                                  etc., and to at least a great degree those who
                                  create films glorifying shooting people and
                                  make speeches thanking each other and saying
                                  “peace”).
                              Gathering
                                  additional information about the thinking (or
                                  the training or conditioning or arming) of
                                  murderers is all to the good. Perhaps
                                  assassins of important people are very
                                  different from your typical suicide or
                                  murderer. But the ideology hunt is always
                                  fundamentally accomplished from the start. The
                                  shooter has, at the very least, the shooter
                                  ideology. It is an ideology as opposed
                                        to basic historical facts as
                                  climate denialism or trusting political
                                  candidates. It comes in many flavors. A
                                  shooter may believe that certain scapegoated
                                  types of people are a threat to his type of
                                  people. Or he may imagine that shooting
                                  hateful bigoted people is a brilliant way to
                                  bring us all together. He may suppose that
                                  obliterating neighborhoods in Gaza is
                                  “defensive,” or that it rids the world of
                                  lesser beings. He may fantasize that a
                                  wider war
                                        on Israel is the
                                        path to
                                  peace and harmony. He may claim to be teaching
                                  someone a lesson, or to be undoing a corrupt
                                  election. He may tell you he’s eliminating
                                  Hitler, or clearing the way for Hitler’s
                                  return. The important thing to become aware of
                                  is that, in any case, he is nuts.
                              The
                                  shooter is nuts. The shooter is Pharaoh,
                                  emperor of denial. Shooting a kind, loving
                                  soul harms any cause it seeks to advance.
                                  Shooting a hateful bigot or a healthcare CEO
                                  generates sympathy, real and feigned, for
                                  hateful bigots and healthcare CEOs. Attacking
                                  the “National Guard” occupiers of your city
                                  gives them an excuse to occupy your city.
                                  Sending armed troops into a city generates
                                  resentment toward those troops. Abusing
                                  Palestinians in a violent apartheid state
                                  fuels resistance. Launching rockets into
                                  Israel provides an excuse for accelerated
                                  genocide. Shooting people doesn’t actually
                                  help your ideological goals, no matter what
                                  your ideology may be. So, you may have an
                                  ideology, and it may be very clear and
                                  coherent and dear to you, but as long as you
                                  are shooting people, what matters is that you
                                  have a shooter ideology that overrides the
                                  rest of what you care about.
                              This
                                  analysis it not missing from the news because
                                  of its simplicity. The news loves nothing if
                                  not simplicity. It is missing from the news
                                  because the people telling you the news are
                                  required to themselves have a shooter
                                  ideology, to believe that weapons help
                                  Ukraine, to be conditioned to shout “but
                                  Hamas!” or “but Maduro!” on command.
                                  About a
                                        third of U.S. mass shooters must
                                  be praised for having trained to shoot well,
                                  must be thanked for the service of having shot
                                  at certain people, and then must be condemned
                                  for having shot at the wrong people — these
                                  are U.S. military veterans. That constraint
                                  makes it difficult to see the problem as
                                  belief in the positive effects of shooting
                                  people.
                              But
                                  that is the problem. The key 
                                
                              ideological
                                  divide is between those who 
                                
                              believe
                                  that nonviolent actions can 
                                
                              accomplish
                                  all things better than 
                                
                              violence,
                                  and those who believe that 
                                
                              shooting
                                  people can be justified. 
                                
                              Unfortunately,
                                  many of the loudest 
                                
                              pundits
                                  on both sides of what they 
                                
                              suppose
                                  to be the key ideological divides 
                                
                              stand
                                  together on the wrong side of this 
                                
                              one.