How do we stop the next mass shooter?

have now caused so many families who will never recover what they lost at the shooter’s hands.

Many will want to focus their rage and anger on tooeasy availability of guns.

That’s understandable, and it is certainly appropriate to respond to atrocities like Wednesday’s mass fatality in Parkland, Florida, by demanding that law enforcement and government find ways to keep guns out of the hands of those who might turn them against so many innocents.

Indeed, we are still reeling in central Ohio from Saturday’s senseless slayings of Westerville Police Officers Eric Joering and Anthony Morelli, a crime allegedly enabled by subversion of gun laws.

The man accused of killing the officers had a violent history that barred him from buying guns; police say he paid a friend $100 to buy the Glock semiautomatic pistol that killed Morelli and Joering. The day after the murders, that friend, now also under arrest, texted someone, “I wasn’t thinking no s*** like this was possible.”

“Wasn’t thinking” is the operative phrase. If Gerald A. Lawson III made that purchase, he took it on himself to break the law to provide his violent friend with a gun. If Lawson is convicted, his sentence should be a wakeup call to anyone else who might not think through the consequences of putting a gun in the hands of a violent felon.

But tougher and better enforcement of gun laws cannot be the sole solution.

Unfortunately, we have seen in too many instances around the world and even as close as the Ohio State University campus that vehicles can be weaponized and used to try to kill those who are just going about their daily routines.

Some will plead for better security systems and structural safeguards to protect students in classrooms across the country. If there are good ideas for safer, more effective ways to keep evildoers from slaughtering children wherever they spend their days, they certainly should not be ignored.

But we also cannot ignore the possibility, or even the probability, that our disconnected society is the weak link that will continue to let those on the fringes feed their despair with violence. More attention must be paid to identifying and intervening with individuals who might be at risk of acting on dangerous and disturbing thoughts.

The young man accused of terrorizing his former high school on Valentine’s Day will not be named here; we are tired of ceding any celebrity to such heinous acts. The question is how many other nameless, forgotten souls are plotting similar acts in their isolation.