Motive matters. But not as much as means.

When I heard about the mass shooting in Atlanta, I wanted to know the motive. What made the accused shooter, Robert Aaron Long, kill eight people at three area spas? What made him pull the trigger again and again? What triggered him?

We all knew what happened; we just wanted to know why. “Police Search for Motive in Spa Murders” was a typical headline.

As police began to investigate, reporters talked to former roommates and classmates and pastors. They dug into Long’s upbringing, his church involvement, his struggle with his sexual desires, his stint in a rehab clinic, a recent fight with his parents.They considered that most of the victims were Asian. Theories hatched. A narrative emerged.

Motive gives us the illusion of making sense out of incomprehensible acts. And it implies – by locating a cause before the tragic effect – that we can keep it from happening again. If we figure out what issues lie beneath an eruption of violence, if we point them out while everyone is paying attention, we might be able to do something about them.

So we examined racism as a possible motive, turning our attention to the past year of anti-Asian rhetoric and the subsequent surge in anti-Asian violence, and to the long history of anti-Asian racism in the United States.

And because motive is complicated, we considered pervasive misogyny and violence against women. We looked at extreme religious teachings about sex and sin, and how they place the responsibility for men’s sexual behavior on women.

It felt right to face these issues, to take a hard look at racism, misogyny and faith-based sexual shame. People gathered in the streets to protest anti-Asian violence; President Biden pressed for hate-crime legislation; officials in Washington statevowed to set aside funds to fight anti-Asian bias. It felt like we were doing something.

And then a man opened fire at a Boulder, Colo., grocery store, killing 10 people.

Once again: “Officials Search for Motive Behind Boulder Mass Shooting.”

The lesson of one mass murder might lie in motive, but the lesson of one mass murder after another must lie in means.

Sorting through the pathologies of each particular killer might teach us something about our country; it might even do some good. What it won’t do is prevent the next killing spree. The one that will happen shockingly soon.

We can’t unteach every poisonous idea that lodges itself in a man’s head before he opens fire. We can’t eliminate every motive. But we can reduce gun deaths – including mass shootings – if we focus instead on the means. The research is clear: The harder it is to get guns, the fewer people will die.

Most Americans understand this. We almost universally approve of background checks and overwhelmingly support an assault weapons ban. But every chance they get, Republican lawmakers, with few exceptions, have refused to pass laws to reduce gun violence – laws that save lives.

Maybe when we look for motives behind yet more murders by AR-15, we’re looking not at the wrong element of a crime, we’re looking at the wrong crime.

Refusal to pass gun laws is killing Americans. The “boyfriend loophole,” which allows some domestic abusers to buy or own firearms, kills American women; lax gun regulations kill American children. More access to guns leads to more suicides. And use of assault weapons – which are legal in this country because Republicans have blocked efforts to renew the federal ban that elapsed in 2004 – more than doubles the number of injuries in a mass shooting and increases the number of deaths by more than half.