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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris.

Okay, well, I'm recording this intro in the immediate aftermath of now two mass shootings.

The one in El Paso, and it appears there was one in Dayton a few hours ago.

Needless to say, social media is now a cesspool. I guess there are a few things I could say about

this. I actually wrote a piece on my blog when I used to blog rather than podcast about six years

ago in response to some jihadist violence. It really is the clearest articulation of what I

have to say at moments like this. The conversation about atrocities of this kind, mass shootings,

is generally so confused and it's so frustrating to see people talking past one another

for political or otherwise emotional reasons that I don't know. I think I'll read the first part

of this blog post just to put my argument in view in the clearest form and then maybe say a few

things relevant to the current moment. This comes from a post titled No Ordinary Violence,

which was published October 11th, 2013. A young man enters a public place, a school, a shopping

mall, an airport, carrying a small arsenal. He begins killing people at random. He has no

demands and no one is spared. Eventually the police arrive, and after an excruciating delay as

they marshal their forces, the young man is brought down or arrested. This has happened many times

...