Diagnosing a killer.

The last seven days have been occupied by attempts to diagnose the Newtown killing.  Is it a gun problem?  Is it a mental health problem?  Is it a family values problem?  Westboro Baptist thinks gay marriage was the cause.  Megan McArdle thinks we've failed our children by not teaching them to bum-rush a shooter.  Charlotte Allen took second best to McArdle's stupidity--but just barely.  Her diagnosis was that the amount of damage caused by such killers could be reduced significantly if our elementary schools employed more men.  She may be right, but the solution sounds a little like trying to address your body odor problem by simply staying at home--it addresses the symptoms but ignores the cause.  However, Allen's response today pushes her incomprehension to a new level.  At the end of her apologia, she has a look at the Newtown Public Schools website (which she mistakenly refers to as the Sandy Hook web site), disparagingly noting that their safety page contains a bunch of links to anti-bullying web sites.
We don't yet know if Lanza was bullied, but bullying is often a factor in these kinds of shootings.  Indeed, bullying--even on Facebook--is its own serious problem that needs to be addressed--or has Allen forgotten Amanda Todd.

In the wake of tragedy...

...and after the grief, we begin to diagnose.  Was the killer insane?  Did he have a motive?  Was he bullied?  What role did his family life play?  What role did gun laws in his region play?  Some of these will be answered in time.  Others will remain unclear.  What is clear is that there can be no effective treatment/prevention without a proper diagnosis.  Certain commentators will present extremely ill-considered preventative measures in part because they haven't the patience for diagnostics; to wit, Newsweek's Megan McArdle suggests we teach children that is it best to rush the gunman in these and similar situations.  This will reduce the number of casualties.

Others will turn to god for answers.  Certainly this is a less ill-advised reaction.  Nevertheless, god can be used to make rash (to say the least) diagnoses.  After Westboro Baptist threatened to picket Sandy Brook Elementary, claiming, as they always do, that the massacre was the direct result of homosexuality, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson has followed suit.