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The most active thread yesterday, by a good measure, was titled, "3 children dead in private Christian elementary school shooting in TN" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The thread is obviously about the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, TN that left three young students and three adults dead. In addition, the shooter was killed by police. In the few months that I've been writing these blog posts, I've summarized multiple threads about mass shootings. I've noticed increasing cynicism in how posters respond, with this thread going in that direction from the very first post in which the original poster, tongue-in-check, suggested the cause of the shooting was that the Christian school had "had too many doors and too little God". The original poster then went on to offer nothing beyond "Thoughts and prayers". Clearly, the original poster is satirizing pro-gun politicians such as US Senator Ted Cruz who responded to a school shooting in his state of Texas by suggesting that schools should only have one door. I understand the inclination but I also believe that the killing of innocent people, especially children, should be addressed with a more serious tone. When children are laying dead on a classroom floor, humor probably should be avoided. If there is another thing that I wish posters would learn, it is to wait for the details of such events. In this case, posters almost immediately started making jokes about a drag queen or a trans person committing the shooting, as if such a thing were unthinkable. When the shooter subsequently turned out to be a trans man, those jokes lost much of their luster. Mass shootings are always politicized now and this one had immediate political dimensions. Some posters wondered if it was a hate crime targeting Christians. Others, morbidly and inappropriately, were pleased that what they believed to be conservatives had been targeted. When information spread that the shooter was a woman, posters discussed that unusual development given that almost all mass shooters are male. When Nashville's police chief repeatedly used female pronouns to describe the shooter who he also said was transgender, several posters interpreted that to mean that shooter has been assigned male at birth and transitioned to female. That provoked some posters to declare that the shooter really was a man. It turned out that the police chief was actually misgendering the shooter who had been assigned female at birth but identified as male. The reaction among some posters to the news that the shooter was transgender can only be described as just short of orgasmic. What had looked to be another wave of calls for gun control could now be refocused on the current conservative pet issue of anti-trans activity. Very little is known about the shooter's gender identity such as how far down that path the individual had progressed, what, if any, type of care had been provided, or even how long the shooter had identified as trans. I would advise everyone to slow down a bit and try not to get ahead of the facts.