I need to start this by saying I still haven’t read the Evergreen High School report in full yet. At close to 650 pages, it’s not exactly ADHD-friendly reading. So for now, I’m leaning on what local Colorado outlets are pulling out of it, including the latest report from Colorado Public Radio.

What’s coming out of those reports isn’t surprising. It’s familiar in a way that should make people uncomfortable. Yet as a society, we continue to ignore the patterns.

One detail that stood out to me is that Desmond Holly didn’t think he needed any mental health assistance. His sister reportedly tried to talk to him about it, and he brushed it off. That raises a bigger question that never seems to get asked loudly enough in these cases. What did the parents think about mental healthcare? Because we’ve seen this pattern before where too many parents treat therapy like it’s some kind of personal insult to their parenting skills, or lack thereof. Meanwhile, their kid is spiraling, and nobody is stepping in hard enough to stop it before blood is drawn.

Then there’s the online behavior. Holly was using terms like “femoid,” which doesn’t come out of nowhere. That’s straight out of incel culture. It also lines up with reports that he used Elliot Rodger’s image in his online profiles. That’s someone reaching back to one of the most infamous figures in the incel world and planting a flag.

At the same time, we’re told he was involved with the school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance , that he was supposedly supportive of LGBTQ students, and even had a relationship with another boy. This kind of confuses me because I thought the whole incel thing was built around hating women and blaming them for everything and having cooties. It’s not exactly a space known for nuance. Yet here we are with a case that doesn’t follow the script I was expecting.

It gets even more screwed up when you look at what happened during the shooting itself. Witnesses reported Holly using anti-LGBTQ slurs before the gunfire started. So now you’ve got someone who may have been part of that community in some way while also echoing the same kind of rhetoric used against it.

If anything, it points to something I’ve been talking about for a while. Young people who feel isolated or marginalized don’t just disappear. They go looking for spaces where they feel seen, and sometimes that leads them into the worst corners of the internet. The so-called True Crime Community is one of those places. It doesn’t take much for curiosity to turn into fixation and for fixation to turn into their whole identity. Once that happens, you’re not just observing violence anymore; you’re wallowing in it.

I also feel like the CPR article is too congratulatory toward the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office for releasing the report. To be fair, it is a step up from how things were handled after Columbine. Back then, information came out in fragments, if it came out at all. This is at least more than that.

But let’s not pretend this is some shining example of transparency.

As of right now, if you go to the sheriff’s office website, there’s still no clear, obvious way for the public to just download the report. You have to know to ask for it. You have to go through a records request, and you may have to pay for it. Media outlets got it right away. Everyone else gets to jump through hoops. That’s not full transparency. That’s better than before, sure, but ‘better than Columbine’ is a pretty low bar to clear.

And even with all these pages released, the most important question is still sitting there unanswered.

How did he get the gun?

We’re told it was a .357 revolver, a family heirloom, supposedly locked in a safe. We’re told the parents’ DNA wasn’t on it, and that was enough to close the investigation without charges. I’m sorry, but that explanation isn’t enough. A minor accessed a firearm that was supposed to be secured. Whether or not prosecutors think they can win a case is one thing, but acting like that ends the conversation is something else entirely.

Just because their DNA wasn’t on the gun doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible for how it was stored or how it was accessed.

That’s the part where I’d like to see a lot more transparency from the sheriff’s office. Not just pages of reports, but a clear, direct explanation of how that decision was made and why no one is being held accountable. Because right now, it feels like we’re getting everything except the answer that actually matters.

So yes, this is more information than we used to get. Yes, it’s a step forward from where things were decades ago.

But if the public still has to dig to find it, pay to read it, and guess at the most critical pieces, then we’re not all the way there yet. Not even close.

(Source)

• Inside the decision to release 600 pages of evidence on the Evergreen High School shooting