Any mass shooting has a complex mess of things that came before the trigger is ever pulled for the first time. Ordinary, normal people don't just wake up one day and decide to commit mass murder against their peers, particularly in a place like a school where people tend to know one another to a much greater degree than most other places.

No, those people are broken in some way, a way that we still don't completely understand and that few seem interested in looking into.

Take the Apalachee High School shooting, as an example.

Four people are dead, nine injured. It could have been so much worse had it not been for school resource officers on the premises responding quickly. However, there are signs that it could have been avoided completely, and not through gun control.

Let's start with these comments in the Washington Post from the alleged killer's family:

A year ago, local investigators interviewed [Colin] Gray and his son about alleged online threats the teen had made to shoot up a school, accusations that [the alleged killer] denied at the time. This week, the boy’s aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post that the teen had been “begging” the adults around him for mental health support in recent months.

Before Thursday’s announcement, the teen’s grandfather, Charles Polhamus, said he wanted Colin Gray charged along with his son.

“If he didn’t have a damn gun,” Polhamus said, “he wouldn’t have gone and killed anybody.”

We know that despite the FBI visiting the Gray household over alleged threats, the alleged killer's father bought him an AR-15 for Christmas and apparently did nothing to secure it so he couldn't access it without adult supervision.

Now, I could probably see a father not accepting the accusations against his son being true--we tend to think the best of our children, even when evidence is clear otherwise--but Polhamus and Brown clearly blame Colin Gray

Brown had a lot more to say elsewhere about her nephew's problems.

The aunt of alleged Georgia school shooter Colt Gray threatened to go “full throttle” on anyone speaking ill of the 14-year-old suspect on social media just hours after the massacre unfolded.

Annie Polhamus Brown, who identified herself as Gray’s aunt, leapt to the teen’s defense in a series of since-removed Facebook posts soon after authorities identified him as the alleged gunman who opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder on Wednesday.

...

“I will take care of my nephew and what he needs on this side — just check yourself before you speak about a child that never asked to deal with the bulls—t he saw on a daily basis,” she said in the post.

“The adults around him failed him,” Brown said, adding that his apparent struggles were exacerbated by a tough home life.

The aunt, who lives in Florida, wouldn’t expand on the mental health issues but said she had tried to get him assistance from afar. She added that she helped him re-enroll in school back in January after a period of absenteeism.

Now, these are just two family members who may have an ax to grind with the alleged shooter's father, but we do have the benefit of hindsight. It's clear now that yes, something was going on with this kid and he didn't get the help that he needed.

That's something that, as a society, we have to change. We have to make it easy to get mental health treatment and remove any and all remaining stigma over it.

To my fellow parents, we all need to be able to take a step back and be realistic about our children. If they're struggling, talk to them. Ask them what's wrong and what you can do to help them. Don't blow it off or pretend it's no big deal.

What we're seeing in Winder is only one possible outcome of that kind of thing. Far more often, the child takes their own life, which is less cruel than killing their classmates but is still a senseless tragedy.

It seems that every mass murder was avoidable, but this one particularly so.