Remember the Phrase "Going Postal"? It's a Bit Out of Date Isn't It?

Among the truckloads of scribblings, tweets, and multi-media commentary that has erupted in the wake of the Newtown shooting, very little of it is actually interesting and thought provoking to anyone who knows the issues well.  One small tidbit that I saw, however, that I haven't seen anywhere else, was thought provoking.  But it won't get alot of play, because it lends some perspective and legitimacy to the critique of "gun-free zones" that is just below the water level maintained by the MSM.  Here and there, you can read about the false comfort of our "gun free" places, but certainly the MSM is having none of it and you won't see this side of the debate broached in any traditional bastion of the leftward MSM.  Anyway, it took Holman Jenkins to remind me (us) what we should have known if we'd taken a moment to really think.

This column got interested in the mass shooter puzzle years ago because so many shootings at the time were happening in workplaces.

That's right folks, it's called "going postal" and not "going schoolhouse" for a reason.  Mass shootings used to be the scourge of the workplace.  But that has changed.

Mass shootings are not less common than before, but fewer are employment-related. Of 20 this year, only one killer was a disgruntled co-worker. Learning has taken place. If laws haven't changed to help corral dangerous personalities or keep guns out of their hands, at least employers, who get to see people in their everyday interactions, have become wiser about personality and risk.

 Why?  To be blunt, more or less because businesses started to be on the lookout for any crazies among their employees.  And they applied tools to help them identify disturbed people.  All those personality and aptitude tests that big companies are so fond of...did you think they were so some HR executive could determine if your job matched up nicely with your talents and skills?  Sure, maybe, but they were also to get a read on who had the potential to go postal.

Workplaces have ceded the spotlight for tragedy to schools.  It might be worth asking ourselves why that is.