David French:

The United States is facing a puzzling paradox. Even as gun crime has plunged precipitously from the terrible highs of the early 1990s, mass shootings have increased. Consider this, 15 of the 20 worst mass shootings in U.S. history have occurred since the Columbine school shooting in 1999. The five worst have all occurred since 2007, and three of those five were in 2016 and 2017.

It’s horrifying, and governmental solutions are hard to find. Twitter’s fondest wishes to the contrary, the unique characteristics of mass shootings mean that they often escape the reach of public policy. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler (hardly an NRA apologist) famously fact-checked Marco Rubio’s assertion that new gun laws wouldn’t have prevented any recent mass shootings and declared it true. Time and again, existing laws failed, or no proposed new gun-control law would have prevented the purchase.

The reason is obvious. Mass shootings are among the most premeditated of crimes, often planned months in advance. The shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reportedly wore a gas mask, carried smoke grenades, and set off the fire alarm so that students would pour out into the hallways. Though we’ll obviously learn more in the coming days, each of these things suggests careful preparation. A man who is determined to kill and who is proactive in finding the means to kill will find guns. He can modify guns. He can find magazines.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do. When policies fail, people can and should rise to the occasion. Looking at the deadliest mass shootings since Columbine, we see that the warning signs were there, time and again. People could have made a difference.

Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik spent at least a year preparing for their attack in San Bernardino, Calif. Farook may have even discussed the attack three years before the murders. A neighbor reportedly witnessed suspicious activity at the the shooters’ home, but was afraid to report what she saw.

The story of Devin Patrick Kelley — the church shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas — is full of warning signs, acts of aggression, and missed opportunities. He was violent, he never should have passed a background check, and he “displayed a fascination with mass murders.”

Evidence of extended mental-health problems, aberrant behavior, or political radicalization is so common that the absence of such evidence in the Las Vegas shooting renders it the mysterious black swan of mass killings.

Adam Lanza’s family struggled with him for years before he committed mass murder at Sandy Hook. His mother was “overwhelmed” by his behavior, and he lived in deep isolation — blocking anyone from entering his room and even covering his windows with black plastic bags.

Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, was known to be profoundly troubled. He stalked and threatened female schoolmates. In 2005, a court ruled that he was “an imminent danger to others,” but he was released for outpatient care.

The FBI twice investigated Omar Mateen, the Orlando Nightclub shooter, and he once claimed that he was affiliated with al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

The list could go on and on. In fact, evidence of extended mental-health problems, aberrant behavior, or political radicalization is so common that the absence of such evidence in the Las Vegas shooting renders it the mysterious black swan of mass killings.

In 2015 Malcolm Gladwell wrote an extended essay in the New Yorker about school shootings and offered a provocative thesis:

What if the way to explain the school-shooting epidemic is . . . to think of it as a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant’s action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before?

Gladwell argues that each new shooting lowers the threshold for the shooters to come. Each new shooting makes it easier for the next shooter to pick up his gun.

Others have used the term “contagion” to describe the wave of copycat killers. Again, each killing inspires the next, and as the killings increase so does the inspiration.

We can’t deflect responsibility upwards, to Washington. We’re still the first line of defense in our own communities.

What does this mean? It means that Americans need to be aware that this contagion exists, that this “ever-evolving riot” is under way. We can’t deflect responsibility upwards, to Washington. We’re still the first line of defense in our own communities. We cannot simply assume that the kid filling his social-media feed with menacing pictures is just in “a phase” or that strange obsessions with murder or mass death are morbid, but harmless.

We’ve trained ourselves to mind our own business, to delegate interventions to professionals, and to “judge not” the actions of others. But in a real way, we are our brother’s keeper; and an ethic of “see something, say something” is a vital part of community life.

Instead, we all too often retreat into our lives — either afraid that intervention carries risks or falsely comforted by the belief that surely someone else will do the right thing. We’ve seen this dynamic in other crimes. The worst of the sexual predators revealed (so far) by the #MeToo movement, Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar, could have been stopped so much earlier if the people around them had shown just an ounce more courage in the face of known complaints and known misconduct. We didn’t need better laws to stop rape. We needed better people.

One of the greatest challenges for any society is stopping a man who is determined to commit murder, and we’ll never fully succeed. Even the most vigilant community will still suffer at the hands of evil men. But it’s days like these, when children lay dead in school, that we must remind ourselves that we’re all in this together. We have responsibilities, not just to mourn and comfort the families of the lost, but to think carefully about our own communities and the circle of people in our lives — and to take action to guard our own children and our own schools.

It is the duty of a free people to be aware, to have courage, and to care for one another. For me, that’s a reminder that I can’t consider a troubled person someone else’s problem. I can’t assume it won’t happen in my school or in my town. Rather than tweet impotently, I’ve armed myself to protect my family and my neighbors; in my past role as a member of a school board, I’ve worked to better secure my kids’ school; and I’ve vowed that if — God forbid — I ever see evidence or warning signs of the darkness of a killer’s heart, I’ll have the courage to seek the intervention that can save lives.

That’s not public policy. It’s personal responsibility. It’s also the best way to confine the contagion that’s killing our kids.

The patron saint of cynics, H.L. Mencken, wrote that “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

As we have seen in the past 24 hours to the latest obscenity, the Parkview, Fla., school shooting. Gun control has been brought up again despite no evidence gun control reduces any kind of crime. Improving mental health care has been brought up without any good ideas about what to do or if better mental health care will prevent bad things done by people who generally do not believe they are mentally ill.

One person yesterday brought up the fact that the high school has 3,000 students, and that’s too large. Maybe a 3,000-student high school (which is bigger than every high school in Wisconsin) is too large for reasons not related to the possibility of school shootings, but there are other mammoth high schools where school shootings do not take place.

The other reason this comes up is because of Wednesday’s report that Donald Trump reportedly favors a 25-cent-per-gallon increase in the federal gas tax to fund his $1 trillion of proposed infrastructure improvements. Of course, as a millionaire Trump probably couldn’t care less that his post-presidential flights to his resorts will cost more. Those of us working stiffs faced with 10 percent increases in the cost of travel will end up forgoing non-essential travel. Businesses will logically raise the cost of their products because their cost of doing business will increase. (Assuming the report is accurate and his supposed idea passes Congress, neither of which are sure things.)

Instapundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds‘ skepticism about climate change activists is expressed in his observation that “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” This was in response to the report that Al “Earth in the Balance” Gore’s house uses 34 times as much electricity as an average American house,” and of course all the private planes flown to Davos, Switzerland, for the latest global climate change crisis summit.

It is rank hypocrisy for, to use an example from this week, someone who doesn’t own guns to assert that guns should be banned, because that person would have to sacrifice nothing. Or for someone who doesn’t own an AR-15 rifle to assert that AR-15s (called, once again mistakenly by the Washington Post yesterday, an “assault rifle”) or semiautomatic rifles should be banned. Warren Buffett has called for taxes to be raised on himself and his fellow billionaires, which would be more persuasive had he not employed a squadron of accountants to reduce his taxes. (In fact, I always assume insincerity on the part of those who claim they would gladly have their taxes raised to fund more government spending of something.)

One of the rules around here is that doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing. This flies in the face of the political-liberal worldview, of course. The liberal hero Franklin Roosevelt said that “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” And so after Pearl Harbor Roosevelt ordered the internment of 120,000 Japanese–Americans during World War II, presumably figuring this would prevent sabotage. It didn’t, but it did grossly violate the civil rights of those 120,000 Japanese–Americans. But hey, try something. (Roosevelt never expressed regret for that, though Eleanor Roosevelt did write in her newspaper column in 1943 that the internment camps should be closed. That would have made for some interesting White House dinner-table conversation were it not for the fact that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were about as married as Bill and Hillary Clinton are.)

I have therefore discovered the Sincere Sacrifice Test to judge political proposals. (I’m sure it’s not original.) In keeping with what I’ve had posted on the top of my computer for decades — the question “What does this story mean to the reader?” — the question to ask is what do you lose by what you’re advocating? And unless you have to make a major sacrifice, your statement is therefore as useful as anyone else with an opinion. If you don’t have skin in the game, you have no more persuasive standing than anyone else.

If you don’t own an AR-15 and you want AR-15s banned, your argument is automatically null and void. If you think overpopulation is a world problem and you being of parenting age are not willing to be sterilized, take your argument somewhere else. If you think climate change is a problem and you’re not willing to give up your single-family house or travel, you’re a rank hypocrite. In other words, unless your solution to your self-identified problem involves real sacrifice on your part, go away.

NBC News:

At least 17 people were dead after a 19-year-old former student opened fire at a South Florida high school on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.

The suspect was identified as Nikolaus Cruz, a former student who had been expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland for disciplinary reasons, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. He said at least 14 other people were injured in addition to the 17 people killed.

The Washington Post adds:

He had been getting treatment at a mental health clinic and then stopped. He was expelled from school for discipline problems. Many of his acquaintances had cut ties in part because of his strange Instagram posts and reports that he liked shooting animals. His father died a few years ago. His mother, reportedly the only person with whom he was close, died around Thanksgiving.

Finally, Nikolas Cruz, 19, had a fascination with guns. …

“Weird” was the word students had used for Cruz since middle school. And he seemed to only be getting weirder, they said.

At first “it was nothing alarming,” said Dakota Mutchler, who went to middle school with Cruz. There was something “a little off about him,” said the 17-year-old, but that was it — for a while.

Then, as Cruz transitioned into high school, he “started progressively getting a little more weird,” Mutchler told The Washington Post. Cruz, he said, was selling knives out of a lunchbox, posting on Instagram about guns and killing animals, and eventually “going after one of my friends, threatening her.” …

Neighbors told the [Fort Lauderdale] Sun-Sentinel that police were called out repeatedly to deal with complaints about Cruz. Shelby Speno said he was seen shooting at chickens owned by a resident. Malcolm Roxburgh told the Sun-Sentinel that Cruz took a dislike to the pigs kept as pets by another family. “He sent over his dog … to try to attack them.” …

Years earlier and in recent months, however, young people acquainted with Cruz, like Mutchler, had seen enough to disturb them.

Joshua Charo, 16, a former classmate during their freshman year, told the Miami Herald that all Cruz would “talk about is guns, knives and hunting.” While Charo said Cruz joined the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps as a freshman, he continued to be “into some weird stuff,” like shooting rats with a BB gun.

Drew Fairchild, also a classmate during Cruz’s freshman year, agreed. “He used to have weird, random outbursts,” he told the Herald, “cursing at teachers. He was a troubled kid.”

He was suspended from Stoneman Douglas for fighting, Charo told the Herald, and because he was found with bullets in his backpack. …

An Instagram account that appeared to belong to the suspect showed several photos of guns. And one appeared to show a gun’s holographic laser sight pointed at a neighborhood street. A second showed at least six rifles and handguns laid out on a bed with the caption “arsenal.” Other pictures showed a box of large-caliber rounds with the caption “cost me $30.” One of the most disturbing appeared to show a dead frog’s bloodied corpse. Most of the photos were posted July 2017.

About this and every mass shooting, read this and this.

The other obscenity of this week happened in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass:

Of the many things Chicago should sear into its memory from Tuesday, one was this:

That long procession of police cars, blue lights flashing, trailing the ambulance carrying the body of Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer from Northwestern Memorial Hospital to the morgue.

Chicago is a city of pain.

Dozens and dozens of squad vehicles joined the procession, and dozens of police officers stood to the side and saluted as the procession passed, and more mounted police units lined up and saluted in the darkening late afternoon.

The police were there for the commander, one of their own.

City Hall will tell you that downtown Chicago is safe and that yes, things happen, but if you think of it in terms of statistics, it’s safe.

But what happened downtown Tuesday, at the Thompson Center — just across the street from Chicago’s City Hall — is just the kind of thing that shakes people’s sense of safety.

Chicago police commanders aren’t supposed to be shot to death, not there, not at the heart of city business and politics.

Gunfire isn’t supposed to happen just a stone’s throw from City Hall. But it happened, and passers-by were frightened and they screamed and heard shouting and a few saw the blood.

Bauer, 53, husband and father, a 31-year-veteran of the Chicago Police Department and commander of the Near North District, was shot while confronting a robbery suspect.

Now comes the politics, the finger-pointing, and the political angles taken to benefit one side or another, none of them benefiting the police. Included on this list will be the suspect’s criminal record, whether he was treated leniently, how he got the gun. All of it will come out.

But right now I’m thinking of the cops, like one I talked to just as the news about Bauer was breaking. I’ll call him Joe.

Retired now, he spent his life as the real police — meaning he wasn’t a politician or some house cat or a climber connected to an alderman. He put his hands on people, making arrests in Chicago.

He has two sons on the police force and the boys are in action spots, not soft spots. They’re not guarding City Hall.

“We’re just sitting here all together, just watching the news, and I keep telling them to be careful, that you never know, that any day something like this can happen” Joe said. “I always wonder if it sinks in. You know they understand, but do they get it? Or do they think it won’t happen to them?”

The rest of us who don’t know the life, we look at police as men and women who make arrests, the people who put muscle behind the laws, or as human actors leveraged in political dramas about excessive police force.

But it wouldn’t hurt us to think of them as somebody’s son or daughter, because they are that, too.

“All I want is for my sons to come home after their shift,” said Joe. “Do people ever think of that? They say they think of it, and they’re thinking of it now, but do they really think it, say a month from now? I think of it.”

Another thing Chicago might want to remember on this day of pain was the police radio chatter, reported in the papers, when the suspect was being chased downtown.

“Don’t anybody get hurt,” warned an officer chasing the suspect. “We just wanted to do a street stop on him and he took off on me.”

Don’t anybody get hurt.

That was downtown. That wasn’t on the West Side or South Side.

So the suspect ran and Bauer, who had heard the call on his radio, recognized him and ran after him.

And not long after that, the commander was dead.

Choking back tears, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson walked to the microphones, cops behind him, and made a statement.

“Cmdr. Bauer was shot multiple times,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, Cmdr. Bauer passed away. The offender is in custody. The weapon is recovered. I just ask the citizens of this city to keep the Bauer family in their prayers. I’ve been meeting with his wife and daughter. It is a difficult day for us. But we’ll get through it.”

In order to live our lives, we choose to become numb to almost everything. We become numb to Chicago’s river of violence that for years has been claiming so many lives in the gang wars. We’re become numb to the bleating of politicians with no answers.

We’ve become numb to all of it.

That’s what happens in a city of pain. You grow numb.

About Bauer and his killer, the Tribune’s Annie Sweeney reports:

Just four months ago, Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer didn’t mince words when he spoke about his frustrations that career offenders weren’t facing stiffer consequences in court.

“We’re not talking about the guy that stole a loaf of bread from the store to feed his family,” Bauer told the Loop North News. “We’re talking about career robbers, burglars, drug dealers. These are all crimes against the community. They need to be off the street.”

He took exception to Cook County’s push to set more affordable bails for defendants as part of an effort to reduce the population in the jail.

“Maybe I’m jaded,” he said. “But I don’t think that is anything to be proud of.”

On Tuesday, Bauer was fatally shot in the Loop by a four-time felon who had drawn the suspicion of tactical teams in the busy downtown area, police said. Officers tried to stop the man a few blocks from the Thompson Center, but he took off running, according to radio traffic of the incident.

Bauer encountered him at the Thompson Center, where a physical struggle resulted at a stairwell outside the government building, Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. Bauer was found by other officers. The suspect was taken into custody.

As a four-time felon Bauer’s alleged shooter committed another crime by possessing a gun. And neither he nor Cruz should have been out on the streets.