Why

 I never knew Rob Reiner. In fact, I didn't follow his career or the movies he produced. The last time I saw him on television was when he co-starred on the Archie Bunker sitcom All in the Family. 

I didn't know any of the people celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on a beach in Australia. 

I didn't know either of the students shot and killed, or any of the students who were injured, in the shooting in Rhode Island's Brown University. 

I didn't know any of these people. Rob Reiner was the only name I had ever heard. Nevertheless, three senseless attacks on innocent people in two days and in two countries many thousands of miles apart has left me feeling nauseous. I feel tense. I feel tearful. I feel hopeless.

And I keep returning to the same question: why? Why is there so much violence in this world? Why are shootings nearly a daily event in the United States? 

I am not a sociologist, nor am I a psychologist or a psychiatrist. But I have to believe that the constant violent rhetoric spewing from the dictator currently occupying the White House is at least in part to blame for the violence in America. Just look at the statement he issued about the murders of producer/director/actor Rob Reiner and his wife. Rather than expressing sympathy about more senseless deaths, he chose to call him names and denigrate his talent.

Former President Barack Obama issued a statement filled with concern and compassion. Former vice president Kamala Harris issued a similar statement. But the current president? Insults and of course he made it all about himself.

Anti-Semitism has been on the rise for a while, and I doubt if the two shooters in Australia were motivated by the rantings and ramblings of the American president. No, they appear to have been followers of ISIS.

Nothing has been released about the university shootings, and a suspect is still at large. So we have no idea what motivated him. And the shooter is almost certainly a male, most likely a young male. Most shooters in the US are young males. 

The murderer of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle was none other than their son. Apparently he had struggled with substance abuse for many years. And he used a knife, not a gun, to murder his parents. So this killing didn't fit the mold of so many others in this country. 

People of all ages are victims of gun violence. The shooting victims in Rhode Island were college students in their twenties. The Reinersiners were senior citizens. One of the victims in Australia was a 10-year-old girl. Another was a rabbi. Still another was a Holocaust survivor in his 80s.

Now we have three tragedies with apparently three different causes, but one common outcome. 

So again I ask, why? Why is there so much mental illness in this world? Why is there so much anger? Why is there so much hatred? It doesn't matter the socio-economic status of the killer. The race of the killer and the religion of the killer don't seem to make a difference.

Some killings are personal, as in the case of the Reiners. Some may be retaliation against a co-worker or former wife or girlfriend. Others are completely random, such as theattacks on elementary school children in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. 

But why are there so many killings? If guns aren't readily available, the killers use knives. Or they build explosive devices. 

I have never been able to wrap my head around the proliferation of mass killings. And sadly, I bet I never will.