Ross: The common denominator of recent hateful acts

With just over a week until the election, we’ve been confronted with a bomb sender and a synagogue shooter. And again we find ourselves wondering what set them off, and if there is a way to prevent the next one.

Here’s what Mayor of Pittsburgh Bill Peduto said.

I think the approach is how we take the guns — which is the common denominator of every mass shooting — out of the hands of those that are looking to express hatred through murder.

The mayor was reacting to the synagogue shooter, who had managed to gather an arsenal despite social media posts so depraved that I wouldn’t have trusted him with a butter knife.

I would hope that after the third or fourth gun purchase – and surely by the ninth or tenth – some gun shop would’ve Googled him just in case.  But that wouldn’t have stopped the mail bomber, who could’ve gotten his parts just about anywhere.

Cops probably could have stopped him for having too many stickers on that white van, but otherwise, that’s just free speech.

However there is another common denominator at work here. It appears they were both scared of immigrants. Something had stirred up in them a visceral fear so deep it made them want to kill people they didn’t know.

If only we could find out how that thought got into their heads, maybe some of this would stop.

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