This isn’t going to be revelatory for those who study violence in depth, but I’m trying to get to an analogy that most people will understand. Particularly when the media splashes all of the “mass shootings” and bring on panelists asking for the same laws. Those panelists who sneer at me when I say that what they’re asking for won’t work.

I was listening to The Reload podcast back on the 17th, and they were talking about mass shootings / mass killings. The first part, is of course, on definitions. Because, as the host describes, depending on the definition used, the Louisville bank could have been the 156th, 46th, or the fourth.

Definitions matter for another reason. How to prevent these events will change depending on the motivations for the shooting.

The best analogy I can come up with is cancer. Cancer is not one disease. It’s a series of different diseases with similar features. You also cannot treat lung cancer the same way as you treat prostate or breast cancer.