Coming Undone in the Age of Mass Shootings

You develop certain psychological reflexes to get you through the initial shock of the first push alert: Some number dead, others wounded.At this point we all know that the earliest reports are typically flawed, so you can suspend belief a degree or two, just for the time being.It’s summer; school’s out, which means they—the murdered, whoever they were—likely weren’t children, which means you can exhale a little, uneasily. That it’s technically a “mass shooting” does not necessarily imply that it was one of the randomly targeted slaughters carried out by young men with powerful rifles who now haunt American society as ubiquitously as the Son of Sam did New York City in the summer of 1977. It could be something interpersonal, still. Something that makes some kind of sense. You can pick up your phone, swipe, and read on with curious apprehension.