I will apologize for the cynicism and bluntness in which I am about to indulge but I do feel the need to ignore the feelings of some liberals in order to write about, what I believe to be, the best way of talking about gun violence. Sentimentalism has dominated our discourse when it comes to gun violence and I think it’s doing more harm than good.

Now, the shooting that I have in mind when I talk about this is the Las Vegas shooting. Which, by the way, has pretty much completely left the minds of liberals (like myself) who were so adamant that things were going to be different after this shooting. However, to the surprise of no one, people did their usual charade of caring for about a week followed by doing absolutely nothing to bring about any form of change.

But what really pissed me off about the liberal response to this shooting was the idea that we shouldn’t talk about the shooter and give him the attention he wanted, but rather think about all the people who lost their lives or loved ones in this shooting. Or the idea that Stephan Paddock’s motive isn’t important at all and won’t change anything. This is the sentimentalism I mentioned in the beginning. Not only does this sentimentalism ignore the issue at hand, it’s also illogical.

Now, I understand that people will say the issue is gun control and that they died because of the lack of gun restrictions. But this is, at best, only partially true. The simple fact is that loose gun restrictions don’t make a man murder dozens/hurt hundreds of people he doesn’t know. To focus solely on gun control and the victims doesn’t explain why these people died.

This, of course, leads me to the topic of mental illness. I don’t want to use this as an excuse for the terrible act, but if a man who does something like this isn’t insane then I don’t know what the point of the term “insane” is. But let me be clear. There is a reason why Stephen Paddock did this. As sane people with little knowledge of or experience with severe mental illness, we of course can’t begin to fathom that reason. Clearly, this isn’t some arbitrary act that just happened for no reason.

This is why I was so pissed when people said his motive didn’t matter. OF COURSE IT FUCKING MATTERS! How are we supposed to stop others, like Paddock, from committing these acts of violence if we don’t try to understand their motives? What is the point of science and studying the human brain if not to understand the thoughts and ideas that lead people to such things? If we understood the thought processes of people like Paddock, couldn’t we predict who was more likely to commit mass shootings simply by mapping their thoughts? I mean, my god, we talk about preventing these mass shootings, yet there are people who don’t want to understand why they happened! It’s ridiculous!

I think the idea of ignoring Paddock is detrimental to our efforts of ending mass shootings and other kinds of violence. We have the science to understand the brain and, like any other part of our body, the brain can be damaged. But it can also be fixed.

Let me also explain why I think it doesn’t really make sense to care about the victims and simultaneously not care about Paddock’s motive. Without a doubt, despite what I have been saying, this was a sad event that left people utterly devastated. We need to ask ourselves: Why was this such a travesty? To ignore Paddock and his motives imply that the reason these people died isn’t what makes it sad. This, in turn, implies that it is sad simply because 59 people died from what was (I hope we all agree, regardless of our stance on gun control or mental illness) a preventable cause of death.

But if this is why it’s sad, then every single day of our lives would be filled with sorrow. For example, a quick Google search says about 90 people, in the U.S. alone, die each day from car accidents. Why don’t we mourn these people? Car accidents are obviously avoidable and, no doubt, many of these victims were not at fault for their death, yet no one gives two shits about these lost lives.

My point is that people dying isn’t sad. We all die and people we don’t know, like the Vegas victims, die from avoidable causes every single day across the world. So, what makes this mass shooting so sad? Well, it would seem the answer for that is how they died. Whether we want to admit it or not, these people died because Paddock had a motive and the idea that a person had a reason for killing these people is sad. Once again, we cannot understand his motives or reasoning, but they exist, and to ignore them is to ignore the reason 59 people are no longer living.