After two mass shootings, Americans ask: Is this what a return to normal looks like?
Spring has arrived, and the American disease that lay dormant during the pandemic — deprived of oxygen by the intense national focus on the presidential election — has made a bloody return.
In less than a week, two gunmen separated by 1,400 miles have taken 18 lives. And experts who study and chronicle mass killings warned Tuesday that there could be more as the nation reverts to a more normal way of life.
“This is a moment in time when we’re finally coming out after months of hiding in the shadows from Covid, and I deeply fear we’re going to see another spate of mass shootings,” said Seamus McGraw, author of “From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter,” which is being published next month by the University of Texas Press.
The troubled young men who have been responsible for most mass killings did not go away — they went into lockdown with the rest of the country, McGraw said.
“It’s harder for us to see the warning signs, because now we’re all underground and we’ve all been exhibiting the kinds of stresses that signal these things,” he said. [Continue reading…]