Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Thomas Matthew Crooks
Here is what we know about Crooks, the man who shot Donald Trump and several others:
-- He's a 20-year-old white man
-- His father had about a dozen guns, including the assault rifle Crooks used
-- He was a loner, who was pretty good at school but not active there
-- There is no sign yet of any kind of deep political ideology, though he was conservative
-- He was bullied at school
It is odd how often these shooters turn out to be young white men. In The NY Times, Michelle Goldberg writes that the dangerous combination of attributes is "humiliation and an obsession with firearms."
We probably should work to make sure there is less of both of those things.
