Suicide-by-copout?

Gun violence isn't on the rise. Like all violent crime, it is falling, and has been for years.

This includes school shootings. Schools are safer than they used to be, and the trend in school shootings is downward, not upward.

But suicide is trending upward.

Maybe the high-profile, "mass" use of high-capacity firearms in shooting up schools is a symptom of the latter, not of the former. Maybe troubled adolescents are using gun violence to commit suicide-by-cop, and are willing to take as many innocents with them as possible.

Maybe we should regard the school shooting phenomenon as something other than ordinary violent crime. Maybe we should stop focusing on gun control and other irresponsible responses, and start delving into what about society has made suicide so prevalent.