Glenn Reynolds, riffing off Neal Boortz, makes a good point:

I HEARD NEAL BOORTZ holding forth on the Omaha mall shooting this morning on the way to work, and I realized I haven't posted on it. I don't really have anything to say that I haven't said before. But it's worth noting -- since apparently most of the media reports haven't -- that this was another mass shooting in a "gun-free" zone. It seems to me that we've reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in "gun free" zones is well-established at this point, and I don't see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free. There's even an academic literature on mass shootings and concealed-gun carriage.

The police reacted very quickly in Omaha--six minutes, but you can kill a lot of people in six minutes. Its notable that the similar incident in Salt Lake City earlier this year features the actions of an armed, off-duty police officer who undoubtedly saved many lives by simply pinning down Suleiman Talovic. I'm not much of a gun enthusiast, but I'm beginning to think it may a civic duty to go to the mall armed. Its simply no accident that these nuts always want to shoot fish in the barrel--you never hear of anyone driving over the SWAT headquarters for a little shootout.

Yet as important as the security issues are, I am more bothered by how a rather unremarkable 22 year old man suddenly turns into a mass murderer.

Some of my own children are in their late teens and early twenties (I'm not that old, but I started a family very young...) and in dealing with them and observing their friends, I see a worrisome trend in this entire generation.

While young women seem to do very well in general--heading off to college, graduating, getting good jobs--young men on the other hand, seem increasingly lost. Within the same family, its not at all unusual to see overachieving girls and boys that can barely tie their shoe laces.

Young men seem to find themselves caught--in large numbers, in a Weed and Warcraft limbo, living at home, subsisting on low wage jobs and hanging out with their friends and computers. They have no skills (beyond video games), no ambition, no sense of responsibility and no self-esteem.

I say this with complete awareness that being a little lost in your late teens and early twenties is pretty normal from generation to generation, but I think the depth and breath of this phenomenon in this generation is beyond anything we've seen to this point. My deep suspicion is that this is due to the advent of absolutely engrossing video game technology.

The statistics are mindboggling--the industry calculates an average of 40 hours a week spent by gamers on video games. That attracting a lot of attention, and a lot of investment to the gaming industry, but there simply have to be social implications. 40 hours a week in front of a computer means 40 hours a week not doing something else.

Societies have always struggled with what to do with aggressive, unfocused young men and they've generally come up with various rites of passage to provide them a role and self-esteem (sometimes in focused aggression...). One might argue that Weed and Warcraft serve to anesthetize this dangerous cohort, but as Hawkins demonstrates, its not an effective solution and it certainly problematic for the future.

I've had to struggle with the problem with my sons and watch my friends struggle with theirs, so I'm not writing this from the perspective of having a lot of answers, but it seems that the first step is to acknowledge that we have a serious problem.