Here we are again, another horrific incident when a man killed strangers in a terrible tantrum. This time the event took place in Toronto, this time the weapon used was a motor vehicle, but the dreadful results are the same.

Though I have not yet read it I am sure there are those who have already gravitated to the position that this undercuts the argument for gun control in the United States. While that position is not entirely without merit it is generally used only as a barricade the gun legislation itself as it is rarely, if ever, followed up by specific actions that might be taken to prevent these sorts of cowardly murders.

Conversely while ink and electrons are focused on the coward’s motivations, the senselessness of his hatred, and the toxic ideology surrounding his lethal tantrum this too rarely moves into any sort of concrete plan of action.

Tragically I think we have decades of the cultural calamity ahead of us. Stripping away the particulars of any single incident, the weapons used, the precise history this or that coward, reveals a deeper trouble in our culture. We are in a cultural phase change, like water going from liquid to ice the result to be something dramatically different. For too many people this phase change strikes at their sense of entitlement, identity, and social standing, all elements that human history has repeatedly demonstrated that people will kill over.

I wish I had some easy answer.