The point being made was that as America becomes increasingly atomised, so to the violence.
See, that's a different argument. still not a great argument, but less bad.
America always been a violent a society with many outlets for people who wish to do violence, and the argument, as far as it goes - increasing social atomization probably leads to increasingly atomized manifestations of that violence - is sound
its problem is failing to distinguish between ideological and non-ideological violence. admittedly there is a gray area that some attacks or perpetrators fall into, but racist terrorism is always very clearly delineated - it's terrorism, that is its entire point.
the ur-event of modern mass shootings is, obviously, Columbine. there are mass shootings that predate it, but I think you can very clearly say there is a Before and After, especially in terms of the media/national consciousness gestalt. every post-Columbine school shooting especially is, to some greater or less degree, a copycat. the essential difference from previous violence is mass communications specifically, ofc, the Internet.
the history of American racist terrorism predates Columbine in a different way. assuming you want to limit it to illegal terrorism (i.e. post-Civil War) it goes back 150+ years. it has waxed and waned but it has always been present in American society. a Dylann Roof or Payton Gendron may borrow from and be acting in the lineage of modern mass shooters from Klebold/Harris on, but they are also acting in a different, much older and even darker lineage of American racial violence that yesterday's Uvalde shooter simply was not. that's not to say the outcome is less bad, but handwaving it as comparable instances of the influence of social atomization, no, can't let that pass unchallenged.
