Was visiting the parents when the Tucson shooting occurred. Since my parents watch only two types of TV (Fox News and sports) and father likes to have it on all day, I got my fill of the coverage.
The Tucson shooting is a tragedy. Nothing I will write below or at a later date in any way lessens that fact. Yet, one would think something like this has never happened before. This, as we all know, simply isn’t the case. There is the black guy shooting whites at a soft drink distributor; there is the Asian of some sort shooting fellow students at Virginia Tech; the nut shooting the Amish children in PA, the Muslim Army officer shooting fellow servicemen at Fort Hood; and of course, the two instances that came closest to touching me, the Columbine shooting and the Heath High School shooting where crazy white kids shot other high school kids. At Columbine the victims were male and female, at Heath, it was all girls. This type of stuff happens in free societies, it is part of the price we pay for our freedom. A sentiment that does not mitigate the personal loss to the victims’ families nor does it mitigate that it will happen again. In the bigger picture Tucson isn’t that big of a deal. Six are dead and in all those instances above, except for Heath High School, more than six died. This will happen again.
The first report I heard was that the shooter was an Afghan vet. Wow, I thought that is unusual. A few hours later that disappeared down the memory hole and the reporting made it clear that the shooter was simply (and it is that simple) crazy. Why did I think it unusual that it was a vet? Simply, because it doesn’t happen. Despite the movies, the “worries” and television shows, mass murder is not committed by vets returning from the theater. The Army officer doesn’t count btw, he had not deployed. Anyway he committed his crime for religious reasons. Since the Heath shooting happened first and since I know that community very well, I have followed other shootings closely. The best I can tell, none of the shooters ever killed anyone or anything before. What I mean, is none of them were hunters. (Now this isn’t clear about the Columbine boys, they may have shot up squirrels and other varmints, but they were not hunters.) Why do I make that point? Simply because hunting teaches one a very important lesson: killing is a messy, dangerous business, it is not a video game. If one is not prepared to deal with the mess, one should not get involved. Hunting can provide food, exercise and an opportunity to observe the beauty of the world. Hunting teaches discipline, cooperation and safe handling of dangerous tools. But it also teaches, taking a life, any life, is not something a man does casually.
Then I started hearing some say this shooting was a caused by a lack of civility in political discourse, that talk radio caused it, that Sarah Palin was responsible because she put out a map with targets on it. One of the targets being the Congresswoman’s district. (They weren’t targets or bulls eye btw, they were surveyor marks.) That a lack of civility contributed to the shooting, that Arizona’s immigration laws created a climate of hate. It was something to hear for a while.
But it got old fast. On and on the coverage went, until the president lead a moment of silence. Fortunately I traveled back to Colorado the day of the president’s memorial service and missed the coverage of that.
When I started this post, I intended to say something very different than what I have said. That happens sometimes. Having gone on so long, I will leave it at this:
Tucson was a tragedy, not a national event. That boy was crazy. He is responsible, no one else. It has happened before. It will happen again. Life is beautiful, short, painful and then you die. Pray for the victims and their families.
No one knows when that day or hour will come-not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Matthew 24:36
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