Saturday, July 21, 2012
Carnage...
I suppose that anyone with a blog should comment on the horrible shooting in Colorado -- but really, what can one say? Tragic, horrible... Sympathies to those affected of course.
Soon the barrage of media "speculation" will begin. ABC began it immediately, one journalist taking the time to check local Tea Party memberships to see if the murderer's name came up -- it did, but it wasn't the same guy. In every recent shooting pundits and garden variety jerks have sought to tie the horrible event to talk radio (Clinton famously did that immediately after the Oklahoma bombing) or any other cause that they didn't personally approve of. If the killer is found to have had a trace of leftism in their worldview, their perspective quickly becomes a non-issue. Of course, in the current shooting, talking heads wouldn't have thought to speculate that it may have been one of the Occupy Wall Street crowd - not that that would have been appropriate either.
Can't they give it a rest and not use every tragedy as a talking point to their perpetual cause to defeat half the political spectrum.
Crazy people can be anywhere on the spectrum of political thought, including being apolitical. Some people are just nuts and it has nothing to do with where they stand on reducing federal power or eliminating capitalism.
Of course, the "gun issue" will be once again brought front and center in all of this. 'Can't say that's a surprise or unwarranted. My libertarian instincts default to a respect for the second amendment but, like abortion, it's not an issue I personally get fired up about. I take it as a given that more and more regulation will occur and eventually, if not sooner, it will be against the law for a citizen to own a firearm - with all the expected repercussions.
In Japan, when a nutcase releases aggression, knives are the weapon of choice. Sometimes cars. Even swords. Guns certainly increase the number of victims in a given act of violence but if a crazy person kills or injures you with a knife your loved ones probably aren't going to care much about the gun control issue. For those who tie crimes to our "sick contemporary world," I'd suggest that anytime and place in history, out of thousands or millions of people, one of them occasionally goes crazy and commits horrible acts of violence. Random murder of innocents is not a new thing but it's certainly always terrible.
For now, sorrow and empathy. What else can one really do?
