Monday, December 17, 2012

Another horrific crime


            Now we turn the page.  The images of the massacre in Connecticut sear our emotions and plague our memories.  As least as much as we can stand.  Too many pictures, too many stories, too many journalists, cameras and talking heads.  At some point we all turn off the television, shake our heads and wonder how this can happen.  Then, soon, we turn the page. 

The memory of Newtown, Connecticut blurs into the images from Virginia Tech, or the Amish school, or Columbine.  Our initial shock folds into our outrage then finally into an uncomfortable resignation.  We live, apparently, in a violent society where thousands of people every year are killed with guns.  To keep ourselves sane we tell ourselves it can’t happen to me, to my family, to my friends.  We know, of course, that the people in Newtown probably thought the same thing.

But what else can we think?  Should we home school our children?  Avoid movie theaters?  Stay away from the mall?  We can’t and we won’t.  Life must go on.  I live perhaps equidistant from Columbine on the west and Aurora on the east.  Virtually all of us in Jeffco knew someone connected to Columbine.  I was privileged the other night to offer words of encouragement to the man who is inheriting the prosecution of the movie theater murders.  These events touch me.  I know it can happen here; it already has.

And yet, I, too will turn the page.  One might think that based on my job I am inured to horrific acts of violence, that my emotions are subsumed by my dedication to my job.  Perhaps in some ways they are.  But something like this, something so viscerally painful, wounds deep even to those whose career it is to seek justice.  Yes, we move on, too, but perhaps with a renewed sense of devotion to work that, just maybe, might prevent someone from being hurt.

It will be up to others to examine the causes of these tragedies.  Hopefully some national examination of these mass murders can come up with, if not answers, at least insight.  I fear, however, that will not be the case.  I don’t know whether solutions can be found in gun control, mental illness treatment resources, or enhanced security.  What I would hope is that those on every side of these issues will make a critical examination of all aspects and be willing to compromise.  Unfortunately, it seems compromise has become vilified as weakness.  Too many believe they carry the right answer, and acknowledgement that contrary opinions might possess some validity is incomprehensible.  So nothing is done.

Because nothing is done, nothing can change.  Which means the next mass murderer is out there.  He will have access to guns.  He will certainly be mentally ill.  He will plan his crimes in secret, then burst out in ways no one can imagine.  We will hear interviews of his friends, family, neighbors, coworkers.  They will tell us he was strange, not quite right, perhaps even creepy, but that no one suspected he was a killer.  No one ever does. For a time we again will feel the pain of the innocents victims and their loved ones. 

And then, once again, we will turn the page.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]