Those that know me well, know that my biggest fear is being shot in a public place. Yep, I'm not even sure if it has a name - this fear. It usually means that I don't love public places where people can get mad: post offices, dmv, political rallies, hospital waiting rooms or the emergency room, police stations, return lines at Christmas, etc. Places where people feel agitated and often not in control of their space/time. No, I have never witnessed gun violence, I get this special fear just from the rash of random gun violence in the US. Lucky me.
I still go to those places, but I don't love it.
We were driving home from Little Rock when we noticed that all of the flags were at half mast. My daughter looked on Twitter for the reason, which is how we learned about the Batman movie shooting in Aurora, CO.
So sad. Sad for the victims, the injured, those in the theater, the theater workers, AMC movie theaters, everyone associated with the Batman franchise, the town, the country and the shooter, too.
It makes me crazy that folks fall through the cracks and are able to be complete loners - plotting thier revenge on society - and no one notices. It is so easy to get guns, bullets - even in mass quantities and no one bats an eye. What has happened that we are becoming a society that is separate? Why is it ok that this student just dropped out of his program and then went on some annihilation plan? Why did he slip through the crack and take so many with him?
Forget the noise that it is the fault of godless humanists (thanks Rick Warren). Forget about the 2nd Amendment. Forget about the NRA and all of their power. Let's get back to a society that doesn't justify our needs to amass weapons and start talking about real gun control and mental health care. Let's start putting our energy into filling these cracks.
