The Thinking Crisis Behind NYC’s Recent Shooting (And What It Means for Us)

How reactive thinking fuels tragedy, and what we can do about it

On Monday, 27-year-old Shane Devon Tamura drove from Las Vegas to Midtown Manhattan. He walked into 345 Park Avenue, an office building where big names like the NFL and Blackstone have space, carrying an assault-style rifle. Inside, he opened fire, killing four people, including an off-duty NYPD officer, before taking his own life on the 33rd floor. Witnesses described chaos in the lobby as people ran for safety. When investigators searched his car, they found more weapons, ammo, and prescription meds. He also left a note blaming the NFL and mentioning CTE, the brain disease linked to repeated head trauma. This wasn’t just an act of violence, it was a tragic example of what happens when reactivity replaces reflection, both in individuals and in the systems around them.

What This Shooting Reveals About a Thinking Crisis

Tamura’s actions show just how deep this thinking crisis runs. He planned his attack carefully, driving across the country with weapons and ammunition, but planning isn’t the same as reflecting. Reflection is what creates space to question, to stop, to choose a different path. That space wasn’t there. He also had documented mental health holds in Nevada, yet by the time he reached NYC, nothing had intervened to prevent what happened. And the note he left behind, blaming the NFL and mentioning CTE, wasn’t grounded in facts. It was a narrative built from grievance, anger, and emotion. Put together, these pieces reveal a breakdown not only in his thinking but also in the systems around him, systems that failed to catch warning signs or create room for reflection before it was too late.

Why It Matters, Beyond News Headlines

When the response to violence is outrage, emotional blame, and political posturing without structural thinking or systemic solutions, we reinforce patterns that fail us again and again. That reactive cycle is itself part of the problem.

This kind of thinking crisis isn’t limited to just tragic events. It’s how we consume news, how we respond online, and how we shape our beliefs without questioning them. And what happens in our heads often ends up shaping cities, institutions, and systems.

Events like this leave us feeling powerless. It’s easy to point fingers at broken systems or scroll past the headlines, thinking there’s nothing we can do. But the patterns that lead to moments like this, reactivity, a lack of reflection, don’t just exist “out there.” They live in us, too. And if we want a different world, we have to start by changing how we think, one decision at a time.

What Can Actually Change Things, Starting With You

We’re not going to fix mental health systems or policy gaps overnight. But we can start where we have control, our own habits. That means slowing down instead of reacting on autopilot, questioning headlines instead of just accepting them, and choosing what we consume instead of letting the algorithm do it for us.

That’s why I created Scroll Smarter: 7 Days to Better Digital Habits and Clearer Thinking Online. This guide is a direct way to start building the habits we’ve been talking about, starting with the digital world, where so much of our reactivity is reinforced. It’s a simple reset designed to help you step out of the noise and retrain how you think in a world that constantly pushes us to react. In a culture like ours, even small shifts in how we think can create a ripple effect you actually feel.

If you become a paid subscriber, you’ll get access to it for free once you upgrade your membership. If you’d rather purchase it separately, you can do so here instead:

This shooting was the result of planning without pause, grievances without clarity, and warnings without intervention. If we want different outcomes, for our communities and for ourselves, we have to train our thinking differently.

Photo by Katelyn G on Unsplash