Every publicized mass-shooting incident elicits the same rhetoric of gun control from the “left” and reactionary gun-rights protection from the “right.” We dig into the assailant’s social-media history to find out what he was interested in and inquire about his video-game usage. //

We do everything possible to find the root cause of a broken man showing such disregard for life — yet we consistently overlook a significant contributing factor: fatherlessness.

So there is no misunderstanding: No matter how horrible your childhood was, it does not give you license to take the lives of innocent people. Like everyone else, I have no tolerance for such an act of evil.

At the same time, I recognize that people aren’t born murderers; they’re a creation of life experiences that lead them to decide to cross that line. //

A child’s most important parental figure is the same-sex parent because children model themselves after them. For young men, having that father figure in their lives provides a blueprint for manhood and a source of protection from the outside world.

The world can at times be harsh for young men, but your father is supposed to be your source of security, a builder of confidence and a teacher for how to regulate your emotions in stressful situations. Most crucial, the father is the son’s purpose compass as he helps guide him throughout the trials of adolescence towards purposeful adulthood.

But what happens when there is no father in a child’s life? What happens to those boys when their compass is nowhere to be found? They all too often become lost boys and grow into lost men. //

What people misunderstand about mass shooters is that they are more suicidal than homicidal. To do something of this nature, you have to no longer care whether you live or die. The action of taking other people’s lives in the process of killing themselves is a way for them to grab attention on the way out because they’ve spent a significant portion of their lives feeling invisible.