I am going to write something a bit lengthy here, but have to get it off my chest.

As the news was breaking, and as one of the early press conferences was being held, I had the news on in the background. I was pondering at first, just like you James, whether this event would even get much attention at all. It is like "oh, another school shooting" ... then they will go to a commercial break and come back with this week's weather forecast. Just another day in America right?

Then I heard them say the shooter was a woman.

I blinked. I think I involuntarily murmured out loud "oh wow..." Just simple surprise. Almost not even an emotional thing, but more of just a clinical psychology thing, me taking note of an outlier data point on a statistical chart.

A bit later, though, they said the shooter was trans. Though tremendously irritated they were not making the gender identity even remotely clear, mainly my reaction was that my heart sunk to my very toes. Because I instantly knew what was going to be the response "out there" in the fever swamp world of Tucker Carson worshipping asshole trolls. I didn't need to go look for it. I just instantly knew what would be coming.

I had to stop and think, though, what all this meant to me and how I was reacting to it all. I also learned, later, that the shooter was high-functioning autistic. I thought long and hard. I thought about labels and assumptions and pigeon holes and categorization.

Bottom line, the gender of the shooter is not relevant, the shooter being trans is not relevant, the shooter being autistic is not relevant.

What is relevant is we have again an unspeakable tragedy. An avoidable tragedy, that we as a nation have made the choice to take no action to avoid. We don't prevent them. We just react to them.

I feel about this school shooting the same as I have felt about all school shootings. It is a tragedy for the victims AND a tragedy of the shooter. As the hatred and venom began to be spewed toward this particular shooter .... I thought back to the first school shooting I witnessed on TV. Columbine. Klebold and Harris had killed 13 people and then shot themselves. In the days that followed, some anonymous carpenter erected 15 crosses on a hill by the school as a memorial. Angry people tore down and destroyed the 2 crosses the man had placed there for Klebold and Harris. The man stubbornly returned the next day and put two crosses back. They were torn down again. Somebody asked the man why he kept putting up crosses for the killers. He said that he put 15 crosses because there were 15 dead, 15 tragedies, 15 families in mourning.

Sort of the way I have always felt about these things, in my heart. And I know I am in a minority. I know no one understands or could understand why I mourned for Klebold and Harris and for their parents. I mourn for the Nashville shooter as well. It is all a tragedy.

And all the people out there playing armchair psychiatrist either way, be it with venom for trans folk or going the other way and saying this person was driven to it by Christians .... Sorry to say it, but you all just need to shut up. Categories don't matter. What category are you going to pick? A woman? Trans? Autistic? White? It doesn't matter, not in school shootings.

Only two things matter: It is tragedy and it is a tragedy that wouldn't happen without f--king guns.

Ban the f--king assault rifles, and everybody start putting your money where your mouth is in talking about mental health care.