Looking For Answers in Colorado

To start, I don't expect to find any answers about what happened in Colorado.  My only hope is to figure out what questions are the right ones to ask.  Our initial question is to ask "why?"  It's not a bad question to ask, but it is too broad.  Without narrowing the question, trying to figure out "why" would be too large of a task to expect to even make progress on.  Until more information comes out, any discussion of motivation or thought process of James Holmes, the shooter, is merely an exercise in speculation.  Still, there some broad themes worth pondering.

My first thought was wondering what connections people would draw between the shooter/shooting and the Dark Knight Rises.  I'll admit that as a huge fan of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, I risk getting defensive.  With that disclaimer in mind, I think that drawing connections between this or any movie is a folly.  While it's certainly been said before, it's worth repeating.  A mind fragile enough to be pushed over the edge by a movie would almost inevitably be pushed over the edge by something.  While there are certainly similarities between the way the attack was planned and the type of attacks executed by The Joker in The Dark Knight (not to mention the outrageous hair color), this is not evidence that Heath Ledger's amazing character had any influence in motivating these murders.  That said, it's difficult to deny that there wasn't some influence upon the form that his murderous ambition took.

Holmes was, by all accounts, a very smart young man.  Enough attention has been paid to his brain power that it's worth asking why nobody saw what most would consider a brain defect.  While the dream of predicting this type of behavior through study of the brain may be a reality someday, today it remains a dream.  Many will try to look back at "signs" that were visible ahead of time.  We should not fall into the trap of this "confirmation bias" type of retrospection.  I can only hope that when we finally achieve the necessary understanding of the brain to make these predictions without the benefit of hindsight, we not only have the ability to treat the problem, but we also have a way to give people access to the care they need.

Finally, there are the guns.  While it's fair to say that James Holmes killed the people in that theater, it's undeniable that his guns allowed him to do that much more efficiently.  I'm not a gun owner, but as a Wisconsinite, I appreciate the place that guns have in our culture.  That said, the availability of guns to those who have no business owning them is something that should trouble us all.  I cannot claim to have the solution to this problem, but I think that it's time to reevaluate how we think about guns.  Marijuana faces exponentially higher restrictions than guns, and I doubt you can find credible statistics to show that pot is as dangerous as a gun in the hands of a madman.

These are just some of the broad themes that the tragedy in Colorado brings to my mind.  I'm sure that as more information comes out, further questions will be raised.  Answers, however, will be much more difficult to find.