This probably should have come as no surprise to anyone with a better than room temperature IQ, but I suppose somebody had to say it.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said on Sunday the suspect’s “mental illness” was a chief reason behind the shooting at Los Angeles International Airport.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said the incident underscored “how easy it is to bring a gun into an airport.”

On Friday, a gunman opened fire at LAX Terminal 3, killing a TSA officer and wounding two others. The suspect, identified as Paul Anthony Ciancia, was shot four times by airport police and is in the hospital. His condition remains unknown.

McCaul said he had already spoken with TSA Director John Pistole about instituting reforms to create better coordination between TSA officials and local law enforcement. TSA officers, he noted, are particularly vulnerable because they’re unarmed.

Apparently, the fact that somebody pulls out a rifle in the airport terminal and begins shooting up TSA personnel isn’t enough proof of insanity for some folks though. There were immediately more than a few who tuned in their spider senses and detected an even greater evil on the wind. Or, at the very least, if he was crazy it was a special kind of crazy.

This man is very likely to be mentally ill so perhaps his violent impulses would have manifested in some way regardless of his influences. But it is worth noting that acts of violence like this often find expression in right wing paranoia. It may be that this ideology didn’t cause this person to take a gun and shoot people, we just don’t know enough facts to make that claim. But it’s certainly possible that it gave him a ready excuse for doing it.

See? We can’t come right out and prove that right wing ideology led to this. But it sure sounds good, doesn’t it? And that won’t stop us from suggesting it!

Welcome to the new normal. Any time some freak goes off the rails, if they choose to use the word “patriot” in any reference other than a Tom Clancy novel, this is what we’ll be getting.