Listening
Gold Member
- Aug 27, 2011
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Will we even pretend to do anything to prevent the next mass shooting by a crazed loner? I doubt it. We'll just add Aurora to the growing list -- Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson -- and wait for the inevitable.
When that next atrocity comes, we'll tell each other we're shocked and stunned, knowing full well we should be neither. We'll probe the assailant's life in search of a motive, knowing full well we won't find one that makes any sense. We'll comfort the survivors and the victims' families and assure them their suffering will not be in vain.
Meanwhile, somewhere out there, another disturbed young man will be purchasing an assault rifle and making unspeakable plans.
I can only conclude that we, as a society, have decided this state of affairs is acceptable, that the occasional murderous rampage is the price we pay for ... for what? For freedom? For the Second Amendment? For campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association?
Forgive me if I sound cynical. I'm afraid I am. Five years ago, I arrived on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., just hours after student Seung Hui Cho's murderous rampage left 33 dead, including himself. I will never forget what it felt like -- the stunned disbelief, the white-hot anger, the unbearable sadness of so many young lives being extinguished for no reason, no higher purpose. No purpose at all.
I was there as a journalist, so I interviewed witnesses and survivors, took notes, wrote columns. But I was hardly an objective observer because I'm a father who has sent two sons off to college.
*************************
I don't own a gun and never have.
But this is disgusting.
We kill 180,000 people a year because of cigarettes and 19,000 people die because of drunk drivers.
Robins uses the deaths of youth in Colorado for one purpose, to stick his finger in the eye of the right.
I would not want anyone to shoot Eugene. Instead, I'd like the them to beat him black and blue with the stock (oops sorry...only blue).
When that next atrocity comes, we'll tell each other we're shocked and stunned, knowing full well we should be neither. We'll probe the assailant's life in search of a motive, knowing full well we won't find one that makes any sense. We'll comfort the survivors and the victims' families and assure them their suffering will not be in vain.
Meanwhile, somewhere out there, another disturbed young man will be purchasing an assault rifle and making unspeakable plans.
I can only conclude that we, as a society, have decided this state of affairs is acceptable, that the occasional murderous rampage is the price we pay for ... for what? For freedom? For the Second Amendment? For campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association?
Forgive me if I sound cynical. I'm afraid I am. Five years ago, I arrived on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., just hours after student Seung Hui Cho's murderous rampage left 33 dead, including himself. I will never forget what it felt like -- the stunned disbelief, the white-hot anger, the unbearable sadness of so many young lives being extinguished for no reason, no higher purpose. No purpose at all.
I was there as a journalist, so I interviewed witnesses and survivors, took notes, wrote columns. But I was hardly an objective observer because I'm a father who has sent two sons off to college.
*************************
I don't own a gun and never have.
But this is disgusting.
We kill 180,000 people a year because of cigarettes and 19,000 people die because of drunk drivers.
Robins uses the deaths of youth in Colorado for one purpose, to stick his finger in the eye of the right.
I would not want anyone to shoot Eugene. Instead, I'd like the them to beat him black and blue with the stock (oops sorry...only blue).
