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The avowed white supremacist (his real name is Frazier Glenn Cross) would send his racist and anti-Semitic screeds as letters to the editor when I was the editorial page editor of the Springfield News-Leader between 2006 and 2008.

Usually, I would decline to print them. They were just too vile.

Now police in Overland Park, Kan., are holding the 73-year-old Miller as the suspect in the killing of three people Sunday at a Jewish community center and retirement home in the Kansas City suburb.

Miller dedicated much of his adult life to preaching violence against Jews, blacks, Hispanics and anybody who wasn’t white like him. Most of the people who foment that kind of hatred never cross the line into taking action themselves. Miller did.

After most high-profile shootings in this country, there is a predictable series of events that follow, led first and foremost by asking the question: “How could this happen?�

In this case, that is unnecessary.

Much like the 2012 murder of six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., this one is easy: Hate and guns are a lethal combination.

Miller is a . The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked his activities since his days leading a branch of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s in North Carolina. He’s been a fixture in the Ozarks for a couple of decades. I first wrote about him in the Columbia Daily Tribune in 2004, when he and another white supremacist distributed ugly pamphlets touting “uncensored news for whites.�

There is no mystery about who he is or what particular brand of hate and evil spurred Miller to do what he’s charged with doing.

But the reflection shouldn’t end there.

We can’t allow ourselves, as a nation, to reach that point that we greet every instance of senseless gun violence with shrugs, as though we can’t do anything about guns, ever.

We can’t accept that mental health is at the root of many mass shootings, but be unwilling to embrace our role as a society in funding the programs that should be helping the sick instead of treating them like modern-day lepers.

And we can’t brush off an extreme racist, without examining the nature of a society that turns its back on other, more subtle forms of racism that seep into our everyday discussions about public policy.

Unfortunately, in today’s increasingly divisive political environment, nuance is often lost.

of a letter Miller wrote the News-Leader in May 2005:

“The federal government not only refuses to protect our borders from invasion by illegal aliens, they prevent citizens from doing so. … The federal government is the enemy of freedom loving, patriotic white Americans, and every politician in Washington not raising hell about the illegal alien invasion ought to be tried for treason.�

One year later, a chain of Mexican restaurants in southwest Missouri closed for a day so its employees could attend a rally as part of a series of similar gatherings nationwide called “A Day Without Immigrants.� A patron at one of the Acambaro restaurants left a sign on the door:

“This is a disgrace to the country that is supporting you. ... You have proved nothing by closing,� it read.

Days later, a rabble-rousing talk radio host of angry white “patriots� who waved American flags and stirred up anger toward any politician who would dare support “amnesty� for undocumented immigrants.

One year after that, the Missouri Legislature voted to put a resolution on the statewide ballot declaring English as the state’s official language.

In the tapestry of American political discussion about matters of race and public policy, there is a ragged red thread that connects those at the extreme end like Mr. Miller, with those who stay in the margins, and those in the public spotlight, who would pass legislation that is meant mostly to rally a fervent base of older, white voters who are often motivated by fear.

Let’s be crystal clear: Miller is an outlier. He is representative of no political party. Nor is he representative of people in southwest Missouri.

But when Missouri lawmakers pass bills to outlaw Sharia Law, as they did last year, they pull ever so slightly at that thread, knowing they accomplished nothing but to stir up a sense of phony patriotism among those members of their party who dislike Muslims. When they make it more expensive for high school students in this state to attend college because their parents brought them to this country without waiting for proper paperwork from a broken immigration system, they send a message to people of a certain skin color that, frankly, isn’t very subtle.

There’s a reason why Frazier Glenn Miller decided to spend the past couple of decades spewing his brand of hate in Missouri. Too many people made it comfortable for him.

As we mourn his victims, let’s reflect on that.