This is America, the home of guns. So long as we have guns we'll have these incidents. No one should ever be surprised.

People have died and that's the word you use.

I realize these shootings occur far too often, but I hope I never reach a time when surprise and shock are not my first reactions.

"Oh? Another shooting? Nothing new here." is pretty much my first reaction.

I know that real people have died, and it's more or less an accident of geography that I don't know anyone connected to this particular incident. Next time I might.

But so long as guns are so freely available here, no one should ever be very surprised at these shootings. It seems hopeless to think that any of the gun apologists will ever see a mass shooting bad enough to make them want to do something effective about guns. So, another day, another shooting.

he is a well known photo blogger, who just happened to fit the description. (Young and white). His name is all over social media, and again, he had NOTHING to do with this shooting, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Because the alternative is that he's part of an organization. If he's not part of an organization, that makes him a lone wolf.

That's not a defense. That's just applying the definitions. People use "terrorist" not to meet the demands of a legal definition, or the widely commonly accepted definition (outside of a relatively small group), but because it meets the definition inside their small group or has the right sense of outrage and venom associated with it.

The Muslim at the El Al counter in LA years ago? He killed the counter staff because he believed they were Jewish or Israeli. There was speculation it was terrorism. But it wasn't because--at least at the time--terrorism required organization and political goals and if he had either behind him nobody could find them. This rankled a bunch of people but you know what? The definitions really didn't care.

Perhaps this guy will be found to have an organization behind him, one that's not just vaguely motivational but had him as a member and participated in the planning. Perhaps he'll be found to have had a political agenda. Dunno.

It also upset some people that the guy who went from Balto. to NYC and killed a couple of cops in cold blood didn't get the designation "terrorist" but was instead a lone wolf. Nor was it considered a hate crime. Instead, he was "mentally disturbed"--and a lot of people liked this, because it diminished collective responsibility. It wasn't about the cops, it wasn't about the shooter, it was about them. Don't impute that kind of thinking to others; it doesn't hold cross-culturally.

As for Zimmerman, the "defense" on this board was often just that the evidence wouldn't procure a conviction or that a lot of the theories offered weren't internally consistent or depended on uncertain facts and assumptions. Those aren't defenses and I really don't remember anybody saying Zimmerman was actually justified.

This white kid's going to be sent away for a long, long time. The question is, Will he be a symbol or a blip? For a small percentage of outlier whites he'll be a symbol, whatever happens; that's not going to be at issue. For most whites, he'll be a blip. McVeigh isn't a symbol. The community dynamics are wrong for that.