Trump Proposed a Lump Tax on the Rich to Pay Off the National Debt

A few thoughts:

Don’t incentivize what you don’t want more of

Internationally, football is known for a zero-tolerance policy with regard
to doping. You don’t get to go on to win 140 medals that get stripped later.
You fail a test, you career is over. The result? There’s not much of a
doping problem over there. It is simply too dangerous to mess with for a
footballer, so they leave it alone.

Occasionally there are problems with people who, during large televised
events, go running across the field during a match to get attention and
laughs. The media generally don’t put these on TV. They don’t talk about
them. And they damn sure don’t mention the person’s name or show their face.
Why? Because if you do so you just told thousands of people who are eager
for attention that this is a way to get noticed. You just magnified the
problem 1,000 times over.

The events in Connecticut seem to be much the same. The one thing you
don’t do to improve public safety is tell say to thousands of other
mentally ill, deranged, young men:

I know you’re alone and invisible right now, and that nobody cares about how
tortured you are. But there’s a way for them to learn about you. There’s a
way for the world to understand what you’ve been through. They’ll sift
through every facet of your life to figure out why you were so upset.
They’ll finally understand you. They’ll finally listen.

That’s the message we’re sending right now to hundreds or thousands of
broken young men who are capable of doing something similar.

Enough already. Stop rewarding the perpetrators with mention.
Just as I advocate with terrorism, the answer here is to say:

The person who did this was mentally ill, and we have many others out there
right now who are just like him. It’s our responsibility to find them among
us, and to help them. But we will not show the face of the coward that did
this; he took the easy path and his story shall never be told.

He wasn’t being heard and he thought this was the way to get a voice. He
shall have no such thing. We will erase him from our minds because he lacked
the courage to make his pain heard in another way. If you are hurting like
this person was, know that this is not what will get you attention. Come
forward. Talk to someone. Do not hurt others in an attempt to get noticed,
because it will only ensure that nobody ever hears your story.

Address causes

These are the two strategies that will stop this from happening:

1. We need to recognize mental health as the origin of this type of
   violence as opposed to targeting the weapons used to carry it out. A man
   willing to kill 20 children is infinitely more dangerous in a world with
   no guns than a rational and compassionate man is with an arsenal.

2. We must not reward perpetrators with information about their story. For
   those who are troubled, this is often precisely what they want. Talking
   about why they did it virtually guarantees that it will happen again.

On free will and practical ways forward

Ultimately (and now is not really the time for ultimately), this shooter had
something happen to him. Mental illness, poor upbringing, disability,
insanity–whatever. Those are factors that directly caused the events of
12/14. If he had a brain tumor that caused this by impeding his ability to
think, who would blame him? Very few. So why is it any different if someone
is insane?

It’s not. Anyone who kills 20 children is inhibited in much the same way as
having a brain tumor.

This does nothing to excuse his behavior. All we’re speaking of is ultimate
cause. The behavior is unwanted, so it’s not ok that it happened, but the
goal should be mapping the enabling inputs (see above) and ensuring that
those factors are eliminated. That is what will achieve the desired outcome
of fewer such incidents.

Not controlling guns. Not publicly studying the life of this person in-depth
which ultimately validates his actions. Those are hot-stove reactions to the
problem that at best don’t help, and at worst perpetuates the suffering
we’re trying to prevent.

We as a society need to treat mental illness like a brain tumor that
disables rational thought, and act accordingly. This means eliminating the
useless assignment of attributes such as “evil” and focusing on turning the
real-world knobs that will improve outcomes.