Through the years American presidents have been stalked by the Lone Gunman. While conspiracy theories have tried to link these attacks to larger conspiracies, the conclusion always comes back to the fact that these shooters were people very much like us, and not in a good way.

We like to think of ourselves as successful, satisfied people. But for many of our fellow citizens, there is a cloud of loneliness, failure and alienation. The frustration that these people feel is magnified by the cult of the American Dream that dictates that we all should be happy, wealthy and wise in our serene republic. But they are not.

Our happiness is their pain. They come from a plethora of ideological backgrounds. John Wilkes Booth was the younger brother in an illustrious actor family who craved recognition as much as he was passionate about white nationalism. President James Garfield was felled by a failed office seeker, William McKinley by a lonely anarchist, John Kennedy by a would-be Marxist who experienced failure on both sides of the Cold War. Squeaky Fromme transitioned from the Manson Family to would-be Gerald Ford assassin. John Hinkley tried to kill President Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster.

And now this 20-year-old who borrowed his father’s rifle and climbed onto the roof of a shed to take his shot at history. The only thing they had in common was their alienation from the happiness that we are supposed to share as Americans.

David Parrella

Buckland