Why are so many men willing to kill complete strangers? It makes no sense to me. I can understand wanting to kill someone I know. If someone I know has betrayed me and this has enraged me. I could see how it might get out of hand and I might kill the person. And I can also understand killing someone who harmed somebody I loved. This person wronged me by harming someone I love and, in a moment of insanity, I reacted violently. It’s not something I approve of but I can understand it happening. Emotions sometimes get the better of people.

Killing strangers, on the other hand, is incomprehensible to me. The murderer wants to kill somebody and anybody will do. Why would anyone kill strangers who have done nothing to hurt me?

So I was disturbed when I read that Jake Teixeira, the guardsman accused of leaking classified documents, wanted to kill a ton of people. Why does anyone want to kill a ton of strangers? It is baffling. Yet, there appears to be a number of people who fall into this madness. Guns are a problem but they are just part of a bigger problem. What makes a person pull the trigger on a room full of kindergartners? Why would anyone set up a gun in a hotel room to kill people attending a concert below? What satisfaction can come from that?

It is troubling because there is nothing that can explain it. There are so many easy answers — violent video games and movies, the absence of religion in people’s lives, a nihilistic mind where nothing matters to the killer, an absent father in a boy’s life and untreated mental illness are all on the list but none so definitively as to be the key. As often happens when there is no rational explanation, this leaves the supernatural. Evil is the only thing that can answer it for me which is more troubling than any other answer.

I don’t like this answer. It seems like a cop out. It is irrational. I can’t tell you why something happened, so evil is the answer. Evil is elusive and frightening because it is inexplicable. Does it just take a hold of a person? Fill the mind with hatred and blood lust? And then carnage? What is that like and, most worrisome, can it happen to me? If I can’t explain or understand evil then how can I avoid evil? I don’t even know what evil looks like until it happens and when it does it looks a lot like anyone else I met on the streets. I won’t know evil until it opens fire on me. Could I be possessed by this evil? Evil isn’t the answer but it is the only one I got until something better comes along. I just don’t believe it is the answer.