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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW OSF project translating Bard into modern English stirs international debate ... Roseburg shooting victim describes gunman's rampage ... Guest Opinion: Plaza fencing is ugly and wasteful ... OSF project translating Bard into modern English stirs international debate ... Roseburg shooting victim describes gunman's rampage ... Guest Opinion: Plaza fencing is ugly and wasteful ... RELOCATIONS Herb Rothschild Jr.: Making sense of UCC Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Oct. 10, 2015 at 12:01 AM Posted Oct. 10, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News The terrible event in Roseburg is much on my mind, as on yours. I haven’t great confidence in the wisdom of my thoughts, so I urge you to share yours either through letters or by posting comments below this column on the Tidings website. Seeking a way to prevent these gruesome shootings, liberals (with whom I usually identify) call for greater gun regulation and more mental health services. While both these responses are understandable, I think them inadequate. I’ll explain that judgment, and then point elsewhere. Of course we should more strictly regulate gun ownership. Using state-by-state comparisons, we know that there is a firm correlation between gun fatalities and gun laws. We could reduce significantly the number of gun homicides and especially of gun suicides. The daily gun toll in our country (more than 50) far exceeds the deaths in the horrific mass murders that arrest our attention, and gun policies should be formed to cope with quotidian, not extraordinary, incidents. But as far as I can tell, no gun regulation short of outlawing possession of handguns, or limiting the number a person can own, would have prevented Christopher Harper-Mercer from arming himself. We have a good background check regime in Oregon, recently enhanced by the inclusion of most private sales. His guns weren’t “assault weapons” or high magazine capacity. Even if he had been required to register his ownership of each gun, he would have had them. Now to mental health. It has emerged that Harper-Mercer’s mother thought he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome, and he may well have. But violent behavior is not commonly associated with Asperger’s, and it’s hard to know what kind of mental health treatment would have significantly altered his condition, much less prevented his fatal decision. I’m especially opposed to relying on a mental health approach to violence because it implies that the problem is one of individuals and therefore we should seek prevention through treatment of individuals. Yes, the individual perpetrators are the primary culprits once they act, but their states of mind aren’t shaped solely by a personal physiology or an isolated history. They are shaped by the world they live in. We understood that when Dylann Roof killed nine people at the church in Charleston this past June. He told us that the racism so prevalent in South Carolina was inseparable from his individual life and actions. In Harper-Mercer’s case as well, I suggest we broaden our inquiry into cause. Two features of the world he inhabited strike me as relevant. One is the prevalence of despair, an existential condition that mustn’t be confused with depression, a medical condition. In particular, this country isn’t holding out much hope for young adults from families of limited means. Harper-Mercer’s personal situation doubtless exacerbated his sense of hopelessness, but that doesn’t alter its objective truth. The other feature is that our nation glorifies violence, and the problem begins at the top of our social organization, our national government. We are always at war. We extol warriors. Images of war saturate our society and validate violence. It is the way our nation addresses its problems. And recruitment into war is what we offer young adults as a way of solving theirs. These social conditions may not seem to have as close a connection with school shooters as gun policy or mental health services. And changing them seems even harder than tightening gun laws or increasing mental health funding. But they are areas deserving our consideration at this sad time. Herb Rothschild Jr. is chairman of the board of Peace House. 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