The Blame Game

If there is a particularly noxious element to human beings during or in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, it's their instant latching onto said crisis (with or without any facts at hand) to flog their particular notions about the world and IF YOU ONLY DID THINGS LIKE I THINK THEY SHOULD BE DONE THEN NONE OF THIS WOULD HAPPEN SO IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!

To illustrate, simply review the Letters to the Editor for any newspaper about the shooting at Arapahoe High School yesterday.  Before anything was known about what had happened, you already had people blaming it all on the NRA, on gun control laws, on conservatives, on liberals, on secularism, on religion.  

And even as a few, scant facts, most of them "hey, I knew that guy, he was like this" anecdotes from other students have come out about the shooter, each morsel has been absorbed and regurgitated into THE DEFINITIVE AND OVERWHELMINGLY CONVINCING PROOF THAT MY STEREOTYPES ARE 100% ACCURATE!

Just … stop it. Please.  If there's one thing worse than I KNOW WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS! people, it's I KNOW WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS WITHOUT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! people.  I mean, please don't feel any urgency to rush to judgment. I'm sure there will be enough information coming to light in the next few days that you can oversimplify  and extrapolate-beyond-all-reason while not looking like a total idiot.