Thank you.

Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying. Violent crime is a brain thing, not a moral failing. It is true in every case.

In this man’s case, his condition latched onto his self identity as Jewish. If this man, same brain, same background, same genes, had been raised in Alabama, he’d instead be carrying an AR-15 to church and threatening to shoot up drag shows. He might have driven his SUV through a crowd of protestors. He might even have shot up a synagogue. If he were born black in Detroit, and had the same issues - and again, I am talking about physical brain issues because there is nothing psychological that does not have a physical manifestation in the brain - he’d probably be dead before he hit 18.

He reacted to the words of a preteen girl as if it were a violent and existential threat. Those words hit his brain and it went into fight mode instantly. It wasn’t a conscious reaction. The “sane” response, the one we’d expect if we were to put ourselves as a teacher into that situation, would have been to sit down with the girl and talk to her. If she said something like “Israel is a racist nation,” he could have talked to her, acknowledged the complexity and need for understanding and compassion, and used it as a teachable moment. If she said “All Jews should die,” it might have merited a trip to the principal, a visit with parents, and so on. Instead, he reacted with absolute fury. It’s the behavior of the vet with ptsd who becomes physically violent in his sleep. It’s the behavior of a person who tortures animals.

You can’t punish a person out of having a hypertrophic amygdala. You can’t do it to a Jew who hates Palestinians, or a Muslim who shoots up the Pulse nightclub, or a white guy who shoots up a synagogue or black church, or the white woman who tries to cause death by cop because a black family is having a barbecue.

We get a dopamine hit when we have revenge fantasies about things like that. I have that, too. It’s tough to see a video with homophobia or transphobia and not think “I’d like to beat that guy.”

The right way to fix it, though, is to go after the actual causes. We know - and I mean that in the scientific sense of the word - that child abuse leads there. We know that poverty leads there. We know that malnutrition leads there. We know that societies that reward toxic masculinity and honor culture lead there.

And if you can’t solve it there for all cases, you can at least acknowledge that the condition is phenomenologically closer to an epileptic seizure than demonic possession or an “evil” person choosing to do evil. They need their brain chemistry evened out. They need self-detection and coping mechanisms.

They certainly do not need to be out on the street, nor do they need to be locked up in an American style prison.