Pardon my Weariness

So I guess we have to do this again huh? I guess I'll try to think of something different to say this time.
I had to go all the way back to October to find my last Jeremiad about mass shootings.  That was about Las Vegas.  At this point you have to whistle past a lot of graveyards when it comes to mass shootings and just focus on the biggest ones, or the ones that involve schools.  Every time this happens the same arguments get trotted out: more gun control, better mental health care, trying to change our violent culture, arming the right people, being prepared for such events.
People always think there is some sort of simple solution.  There is not.  We have spent years, if not centuries creating the culture that produces this sort of violence, and we have worked ourselves into a state of utter paralysis to deal with the consequences.
In the initial wave of reactions this morning I read that the suspected shooter in the Florida case is nineteen year old Nicholas Cruz.  He had exhibited some problematic behavior, he had been expelled from school and his social media history shows an obsession with guns and violence. Okay, apart from the expulsion, and the fact that social media wasn't a thing when I was nineteen, that fairly describes at least half of the guys I knew in high school, probably including me.
There was a chilling assessment in one of the Post's articles about it this morning:

Had everyone who knew of his (Cruz) struggles sat down in a room and compared notes, perhaps an alarm would have sounded ahead of what emerged on Valentine's Day...

In 2012 a man I knew and had been counseling killed his estranged wife and two daughters.  Two of his neighbors, one of whom was also clergy, and I were talking as the three men who probably knew what was going on better than anyone.  Two of us were actually experienced in dealing with mental health problems.  All of us knew that there was potential for violence.  None of us expected what eventually happened.  One of the other men said, "if we had all sat down and compared notes we might have been able to see this coming, but probably not."
"Probably not," I wanted that to probably not be true, but I had to admit that it pretty definitely was true.  I really wanted to at least indulge the fantasy that we could have stopped what happened. It was true because none of us could bring ourselves to suspect that he would kill his little girl with the shy smile and the trusting eyes.  Like people who knew Cruz, we understood that he was a little off, we knew there was a history of violent and erratic behavior and we knew he was being treated for depression.  We could not bring ourselves to expect the worst.
That one time taught me to never assume the worst won't happen.  It also taught me how powerless we can be to actually stop something like this.  To this day I don't know when he made the decision to do it, but I know all three of us probably talked to him after he had become a murderer in his heart.  All three of us had the connection to him to get him help if we knew he needed it, but we didn't have any resources that could stop him.  We couldn't have him committed without some solid proof that he was a danger to himself or others, if we had called the police they might have stopped by and talked to him, but they probably would have had the same impression that we did: he was sullen but stable.
I know you might want easy answers, but in my experience there are none. The hard answers are that we have to make some deep changes in our national psyche.  We have to have the will to enact good gun control legislation, yes, legislation that responsible gun owners can support.  We have to curtail the ability of lobbyists like the NRA to hamstring gun laws and the efforts to make them better. These groups represent corporations more than individuals and their rhetoric relies on and stokes highly emotional arguments against "taking away our freedom."
But gun laws alone are not going to prevent things like this. As we have seen in Las Vegas and here, it is possible to buy these things through entirely legal channels. I don't suspect that is likely to change for real, the best we can do is tighten up the requirements and do a better job at enforcing the rules we do have. As for the "They're coming for your guns" rhetoric, the government, contrary to what some might tell you, is rather constrained from taking things you own away from you (4th Amendment on top of the 2nd). Even in a tightly regulated state like Maryland there are still plenty of ARs at the range on any given day, even if their owners did have to pass a background check and do some paperwork to get them, they are bearing the heck out of those arms.
We've got other, less obvious and more difficult work to do.  We need to build communities that do not simply marginalize people who are struggling with mental illness, and we do need to do a better job of getting people who know about troubled folks connected with each other and with resources to help.  That can be really tough, because many of us are bound by confidentiality rules, and we are every bit as capable of denial as anyone. We need structures that can help individuals like pastors and guidance counselors intervene in situations where people are troubled; we need more latitude to get support even if all we have is a hunch, a lot of times we just don't have any options.
Of course none of this is ever going to make us completely safe, but at some point we need to get the people involved into the same room so that they can compare notes.  I think we're at a point now where we really have to stop being shocked that this happens.  We haven't changed anything meaningful from Columbine to now.  Sandy Hook was six years ago and there have just been too many of these incidents for us to plausibly claim ignorance or innocence.