Charles, It seems to me that you and Sirota are both missing an obvious point when it comes to profiling serial killers. As you note, whatever the merits of profiling by race may or may not be, it seems that in this context, profiling by sex and, to a lesser extent, age is entirely appropriate. The recent mass murderers have overwhelmingly been young men whose mental conditioned worsened in late teens or early 20s. And serial killers — like killers generally — tend to be male. You write: “For men, this is a hard and sad truth; for David Sirota’s attempt to turn the events of last Friday into a conversation about race, it is fatal.”
I agree with you regarding Sirota, but I’m not sure I agree this truth is all of that hard or sad “for men.” Personally, I have no problem with law enforcement, mental health professionals, educators et al taking this fact into account. Nor, would I imagine, would there be much by way of organized opposition to such profiling. The fact that young men have a greater propensity for violence and a natural problem with impulse control used to be a routine conservative insight. Indeed, this fact has often been at the core of many arguments for marriage, good fathering and things like, well, Civilization. I see no reason to turn the obvious truth about young men into yet another excuse to complain about “insensitivity” or discrimination.