The journalism of why: How we struggle to answer the hardest question

In the wake of a shooting, there are frantic efforts to answer the question: “Why?” Who is the shooter and why did they do it? Often the shooter winds up dead, making them unavailable for interrogation. In the absence of answers, political or cultural or religious antagonists will bend available evidence to enhance their cause.

This is happening as I write this with a 20-year-old killer named Thomas Matthew Crooks, who tried to kill a former president but wound up killing another man. I have read every story I can find with any hint of evidence of what kind of person he was, and why he did what he did. The public wants a definitive cause. I predict they — we — will never get one.

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