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Mere weeks after a series of shootings rocked both Texas and Ohio, another shooting in Texas has left at least seven dead. At least 21 other people were injured, three of whom were law enforcement and one of whom was a toddler less than two years old.

The shooter has not yet been named. State troopers tried to pull him over for failing to turn on his turn signal. He slowed his car to stop, but before it completely halted the man pulled out a rifle and shot at the state troopers. One was injured. He then fled, occasionally shooting into groups of people. He even hijacked a mail van before he was shot in a shooting match with police.

Trump has said that this shooting has not changed his stance on gun control. The twittersphere is, naturally, overflowing with vitriol from each side of the gun control debate. All the argument over gun control makes it hard to see what’s happening, in this author’s opinion. So let’s set aside the gun control question for the moment. What are these shootings? Acts of desperate, pathetic men? Psychotic outbursts of violence committed by the insane? Or, are they acts of terrorism, as some have suggested?

If terror is the best category for these acts, then what kind of terror? Many focus on white nationalism, but again I think focusing on white nationalism is unintentionally confusing and misleading. Instead of “what,” the question we should ask ourselves is “why?” Why are acts of terror occurring more frequently now than ever before? Why are Americans tempted to commit acts of terror? These questions will not have simple answers, and what answers they yield won’t come easy. But we must still try.

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