The NY Cop Killer was just another resentful, MENTALLY ILL man with easy access to a gun - the same old story.

http://www.alternet.org/man-who-killed-nypd-officers-was-just-another-resentful-mentally-ill-person-access-firearms?akid=12615.294211.YBfIQM&rd=1&src=newsletter1029277&t=6

 

No sooner had the  fatal shooting of two NYPD officers reached the newswires than the predictable partisan backlash began: conservatives  who had been on their heels as a movement grew against police brutality suddenly  found their foooting from which to unleash a torrent of invective blaming liberals for the killings. Sensible people have pointed out that it is possible to mourn the brutal killings of police officers alongside the pointless deaths of unarmed civilians. 
But overlooked in this narrative is the depressing reality that this latest multiple murder has much more to do with America's continued inability to solve its epidemic of gun violence, particularly by the mentally ill, than it does with the ongoing debate about policing tactics. It's not just that (minor incidents of looting notwithstanding) protests against excessive force by police have been expressly non-violent and that a movement whose slogan is "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" can hardly be blamed for causing someone to shoot innocent public servants. There are other, deeper problems. 
The Right's preferred narrative about the killings that the shooter's primary motive was to take revenge on police is complicated by the fact that he  first shot his ex-girlfriend  before using his gun on the officers and finally on himself. It's difficult to assert a cold-blooded anti-institutional revenge motive when his first victim was a defenseless former lover. The conservative story that anti-police protests convinced the killer to take racially motivated vengeance is complicated by the fact that the victims, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were both people of color. Nor was the killer a rational actor: he had a  long history of mental illness and attempted suicide. His social media presence paints a portrait of a man veering back and forth from self-loathing to rage against society. 
In this respect, he was little different from other recent mass murderers in America: mentally ill, usually violent against women, resentful of the world, and somehow able to acquire a gun. In Oregon earlier this year a deeply religious conservative teenager  shot a fellow student to death and injured a teacher to rid the world of "sinners." Another mentally ill and sexually frustrated young man acquired an arsenal of guns and  went on a murderous and ultimately suicidal rampage in Isla Vista, apparently in an attempt to punish all the young women who had spurned him.