That’s the question that flashes through American minds after a mass shooting. Was the alleged killer a jihadi, like the shooter at the Pulse night club in Orlando in 2016? A left-wing extremist, like the shooter who attacked a congressional baseball practice in 2017? A vegan animal-rights zealot? Or, as apparently was the case yesterday in Buffalo, New York, a white supremacist who believed in the “great replacement” theory?
In a politically polarized and heavily armed society, each new massacre rapidly becomes another occasion for mutual accusation.