To combat targeted violence, we should bolster systems to identify and supervise the severely mentally ill.
The deadly shooting at a Nashville school in March epitomized all that is horrific about targeted violence—the unexpected nature of it, the twisted conduct of the attacker, the trauma of the survivors, and the anxiety that oozes into the American limbic system after any such attack.
In its wake, policymakers and media pooh-bahs defaulted to the usual politicized explanations and remedies, hotly arguing over major societal issues such as transgenderism, gun culture, and hate crimes in general. Those crimes are unquestionably on the rise. According to the FBI, in 2020 there were 40 targeted shooting incidents, about a third more than the previous decade’s peak of 31 incidents, in 2009. By 2021, the number had grown again by a third, to 61 active shootings. The year 2021 also set new records both for hate crimes in general and for specifically anti-Semitic incidents. The latter, according to the Anti-Defamation League, increased again by 35 percent in 2022, reaching 3,697 incidents nationwide.
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Hannah Meyers is director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute.
Photo by Brian Sevald/iStock