For a start, these acts of violence are associated with human factors.  As quick as people are to blame the weapon of choice at a violent incident, it’s a person who wields it and decides what they do with it.  Whether driven by mental illness, radical beliefs, warped theology or just ferocious anger at the world, people made a decision to commit these acts against other people.  Answering “Why?” is the hard part, and may be the most elusive of problems to ever be solved.

It’s not for lack of trying.

In 2002, the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education completed a landmark study examining the causes of the rash of school shootings that occurred prior to and following the tragic shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.  That report and subsequent other studies have led to improvements in emergency management plans for schools nationwide. Despite those preparedness steps, tragedies such as Virginia Tech, Newtown and others have still occurred.

Even DHS has made available resources to educate businesses, office building owners, law enforcement officials and citizens on how to respond to “active shooter” situations. We’ve certainly become a whole lot smarter in how we prepare and respond to these situations, but we’re still in the dark when it comes to really understanding the “human factor” in terms of violence.

Investments in research, such as the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a DHS Center of Excellence, can only go so far. Their work has taken a hard look at terror incidents in this country and around the world, trying to figure out what makes people do bad things.

Unfortunately, other efforts by DHS to actually look at “human factors” barely got off the ground before they were scuttled by leadership changes within the Science & Technology Directorate and a lack of Congressional support by appropriators. Funding another round of emergency management equipment purchases always seems to provide a better photo op for the Congressional District than supporting analyses that could help us prevent someone from pulling a trigger. That may sound cynical, but look at the budget documents and arguments from the past ten years of DHS to see what matters most.  Shiny red fire trucks win…

We also need to face the facts we are dealing with an unsolved challenge that dates back to Cain & Abel.

Dealing with human factors means that we as individuals as well as a populace have to look into the mirror of life and take our own assessment of what matters and how we act with every decision. Life, like liberty, is precious, and can be lost with rash acts and decisions.

Some may see such studies into human factors as an endless road to addressing an unsolvable challenge, but it seems to be the one fact that is so often overlooked and ignored in trying to come to terms with tragedy after tragedy. All too often we treat mental health issues with derision or outright ignorance because they are, “just too complicated,” and if we ignore them, they will go away. Talk about not dealing with the most obvious of problems…

I think it’s way past time to start down this long road of dealing with mental health issues and their connection to violent incidents if we ever hope to have a world that doesn’t look so tragic and painful when we wake up each day. Just because a road may appear to have no end does not mean it’s not worth taking. We have enough victims to remember along the way, and maybe by spending some time on this path we’ll have fewer in the years to come. That sounds like a journey worth taking.