As the mother of two sons, 25 and 21, I can't look at that photo of Thomas Crooks for very long without feeling desperately sad for him.
Crooks was killed by police after using an AR-15 to shoot at Donald Trump from a rooftop perch a mere 150 yards from where he stood on the stage at his rally last Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Missing his intended target, the 20-year-old--who was later revealed to be a registered Republican--killed retired fire captain Corey Comperatore and injured two others in the crowd.
The FBI provided an update on the shooting investigation to Senate and House lawmakers on Wednesday, revealing new details about his whereabouts and actions prior to the shooting, but provided no clues about his motive.
Meanwhile, amateur internet sleuths immediately went to work to dig up more information about Crooks.
One of the more disturbing discoveries was that Crooks, the son of a Libertarian father who owned an arsenal of guns, appeared in a video produced by Black Rock, a right-wing "asset management" firm with shady ties to the Republican Party.
The video's discovery lit up Conspiracy Twitter: Was Thomas Crooks recruited by Black Rock to act as their Lee Harvey Oswald-esque patsy to stage an assassination attempt on Trump in what MAGA would call a "deep state false flag PsyOp" when accusing Democrats of plotting such a thing, like they did with January 6th? And if so, why?
It's not hard to imagine the direct line from being raised around guns to using them. However, I prefer to wait for the official investigation rather than lean into a conspiracy like MAGA does.
But we don't need conspiracies when we have the sad facts about Crooks, all of which read like a laundry list of how most shooters are described: young, white, male, loner, bullied at school, obsessed with guns and mass shootings.
The Independent reported that Crooks appears to have scoped out the site of Trump's campaign rally six days before he went to the event itself.
Sources told CNN that Crooks’ online search history revealed he had looked up information on Ethan Crumbley, the school shooter who killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021. A screenshot of Crumbley’s arrest photo was also found on Crooks’ cellphone, according to the Independent.
Crooks also searched for instructions for making simple bombs and for information about the Democratic National Convention being held next month in Chicago.
Saddest of all, Crooks also looked up information about major depressive disorders and depressive crisis treatment just three months ago, his search history revealed.
If Thomas Crooks had been able to ask for the help he needed, perhaps Saturday's rally would've only been notable for its lack of notability.
We might never know what ultimately motivated Crooks to climb up onto that rooftop with an AR-15 strapped to his back, but we can directly point a finger at the gun culture in this country and how it impacts the "quiet" young white men who decide to let an automatic weapon speak for them instead.