Are you afraid to go to the grocery store?

Are you afraid to see a lone young white male amongst a diverse crowd?

What doesn’t make sense is that Hillary Clinton lost, so we were supposed to be safe, right?

If he had lost, there would be active shooters wherever non-whites and women gathered. Those were Trump’s own words. As if you forgot.

So why have disaffected white males continued to turn our gathering places slick with blood?

Perhaps there is an answer but certainly not a solution…Stochastic terrorism.

“The use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable,” states Daily Kos.

“The person who actually plants the bomb or assassinates the public official is not the stochastic terrorist, they are the ‘missile’ set in motion by the stochastic terrorist. The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media as their means of setting those ‘missiles’ in motion,” continued Daily Kos.

“The stochastic terrorist then has plausible deniability: ‘Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and I'm not responsible for what people in my audience do.’”

Powerful stuff yet calling it Stochastic Terrorism is telling us what we already know. And there’s the problem. We’ve grown to accept this.

“The message I would like to see out there is, that this is evil, this is hatred and anger, and then we add a gun,” said Toby Hoover, founder of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, the morning after El Paso and Dayton. “We’ve accepted this kind of culture. We’ve got a lot of politicians, including the one at the top, who have accepted this culture. And this is a huge problem.”

Hoover says we can stop this. “Nobody needs these assault weapons that can do that much damage in a minute,” she says. “If we wait, it won’t happen. It has to happen right now. We need to call Congress back from their August recess and deal with this.”

But here in Ohio, the Republican-dominated Ohio Legislature continues to chip away at any semblance of gun control.

For roughly $70 bucks, eight hours of training, and being felony-free, you can hide a gun in your waistband or your purse. As surreal as this has sounded since conceal carry became so normal, the state may even make this unnecessary.

House Bill 174 is working its way through the Statehouse and maybe to Gov. DeWine’s desk, who is likely to sign it into law. It could take away the need for a concealed permit altogether (and any state mandated training) and allow anyone to stuff an AR-15 down their camo pants or into their supersized Kate Spade bag.

“We’ve been fighting this for 20 years, and there’s nobody that wants this. The Gun Lobby goes to a few legislatures and they go into their own small districts and decide this is what everyone wants to do,” she said.

What we need to remember – and never lose sight of – is that law enforcement is against House Bill 174.

“All of them are, including the Sheriffs,” said Hoover.

Pushing the bill is gun-crazy state Rep. Ron Hood (R-Ashville). How does Rep. Hood, obviously hardcore pro-law enforcement, respond to law enforcement when they themselves fear House Bill 174?

“That doesn’t make any difference to him. There were over 90 people who testified against this,” she said.

True, Rep. Hood is owned by the gun lobby. But Hoover said it’s the combination we’ve grown to accept. Spurred on and planted like a bomb by a Stochastic Terrorist.

“Fear is a big piece of this. Along with the anger. And the hatred, and then add a gun. What have you got? What a combination,” she says.