Mass shootings have an impact on the psyche of our society writ large that a lot of other gun violence does not. They are, in simple terms, effective acts of terrorism. They terrorize. When you report on these shootings, something quickly becomes very obvious: They don't just irreparably damage the lives of the victims, their families, and their friends; they also traumatize witnesses, responding law enforcement officers, doctors, nurses treating the injured, and the community as a whole. And that trauma spreads outward like a wave.

conservative columnist Noam Blum, who said pointedly and concisely something I believe with all my heart: “Nothing is monocausal. There are just parts of our society that are unfathomably broken and they occasionally intersect in unspeakably awful and evil ways.”

Before we have sorted out who or what failed and why, many people have focused on restricting gun access. I will not blithely dismiss that discussion. There is simply no getting around the fact that America has a lot of guns, and it would not be intellectually honest to dispute that the mass availability of guns makes attacks like this easier to commit. Were there to be a wholesale gun confiscation in America, there would doubtless be fewer attacks like this.

The inability of society to properly monitor and manage people experiencing mental health crises is behind many problems, and is largely attributable to the well-intentioned but ultimately problematic choice to deinstitutionalize mental health care in favor of a model of community-based management.

I’m certainly not advocating for “re-institutionalization” but clearly something has to change, and the pendulum needs to swing back toward stronger interventions. Maine and the nation can design a better system that preserves humane treatment while simultaneously taking seriously the need to protect both society, and those like Card who desperately needed help and didn’t get it.

The Republican Party’s fetishization of guns and its fetishization of insurrection — one that’s reached a hysterical pitch since Donald Trump’s presidency — go hand in hand. Guns are at the center of a worldview in which the ability to launch an armed rebellion must always be held in reserve. And so in the wake of mass shootings, when the public is most likely to clamor for gun regulations, Republicans regularly shore up gun access instead.

As it happens, in the hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, before the authorities knew who McVeigh was, he was pulled over during a routine traffic stop and then arrested for carrying a gun without a permit. In 2019, however, Oklahoma legalized permitless carry. Under the new law, McVeigh would have been let go.