As news of the Thousand Oaks mass shooting in California spread, one line from the coverage really stood out.

Over and over again, we heard journalists say ‘this is the worst mass shooting in America in 12 days’.

Eventually, the death toll surpassed that from the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, but it’s just another reminder of how frequent these tragedies have become.

We now know that the shooter was Ian David Long, a 28-year-old who served five years in the US Marine Corps as a machine gunner, including a tour in Afghanistan.

He did have some run-ins with authorities, including one this year. Here’s CNN:

Back in April, officers in Thousand Oaks, California, responded to a disturbance at the home where Ian David Long lived.

Long…was acting somewhat irate and a little irrationally, according to Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean.

A mental health specialist with the crisis team met with him and felt he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

But after speaking with him, they decided not to detain him under laws that allow for the temporary detention of people with psychiatric issues.

Well, judging by his final Facebook post, he was clearly going through a great deal:

Authorities have identified a Facebook post believed to have been made by the shooter around the time of the attack, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the ongoing investigation.

In it, the writer says: “I hope people call me insane… (laughing emojis).. wouldn’t that just be a big ball of irony? Yeah.. I’m insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is ‘hopes and prayers’.. or ‘keep you in my thoughts’… every time… and wonder why these keep happening…”

When CNN read the post to a friend of Long’s, who did not want to be publicly identified, the friend said, “That does not sound like Ian to me at all. I don’t know what was going through his head when he wrote this. It must have been terrible.”

According to the gunman’s cousin, AJ Schramm, his mother Colleen Long actually vented about her son’s problems at a recent wedding, so it’s clear the situation had been escalating.

Long’s former roommate, Blake Winnett, told the New York Post that he “was kind of weird”:

“He always locked himself in his room, he was always by himself,” said Winnett. “I didn’t really know him very well.”

Winnett, 35, said he never witnessed Long get violent. But he did have some odd habits.

“He would go to the gym and then he would, I guess, try to learn dance moves or something,” he recalled. “He would close the garage and be playing music and dancing in there, like sweating. I . . . would be like, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

It’s clear that he never quite got the help he needed, and now there are 12 people dead.

[sources:cnn&newyorkpost]