spree killer

It’s Only A Matter Of Time

…and I can’t say it hasn’t happened. In fact, I rather think it may have.

Just over a year ago, I predicted a bloody spring. My premise was that we as a population produce a set percentage of people who go violently insane every year, and the crops from 2020 and 2021 had been festering under lockdown in their parent’s basements, just waiting for a new crowd to form so they could self-destruct in public as rampage shooters. Regrettably, that turned out to be the case, and it’s repeating again this spring.

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Bloody Spring

Opinion

It’s happened again: We’ve had yet another mass shooting. Just between us, as more and more people start coming out of their year-long lockdowns, I predict we’re going to have a fair number more. We got a year off from them, but that just means we’ve had people become crazy at the normal rate… but they didn’t have obvious targets and so kept right on stewing in their basements.

Plus, every time there’s one of these shown on CNN, it seems other nuts see the television coverage and get inspired to do one of their own — as though being a copycat nut-job is somehow better than the first one, who might have been honestly acting out his own selfish frustrations on innocents rather than pretending to for the free press.

Don’t get me wrong: They’re both foul and almost inhumanly selfish. But the copycat is at least partly after the attention, which is worse — people’s lives are more valuable than that.

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TRIGGERED: Common Sense Gun Control

This is not being written in response to any particular event.  There was probably one today or yesterday or last week, and CNN no doubt covered it with their usual attention to detail and mechanical concern.  I’m probably pretty sad about it myself.  This is why I’m writing this article on a day when the headlines are about something else.  It’s important to keep perspective.  You can’t create effective policy and solve social problems when you’re too busy yelling or sobbing or both.

Trouble is, I’m furious.  Even today, I can’t help but be furious (more…)

Comment, To Copy And Paste

Those who read my articles surely know by now I tilt at windmills on the Internet.  Most people in my circle of acquaintance see the inhumanity and incivility and they just accept it; they say, “What do you expect?  It’s the Internet.”  And they let it go.

I could, I suppose, but I’ve long believed that we all have a duty to improve the world around us if we can; that an accumulation of small good deeds and kindnesses is the only bulwark we can raise against that genuine evil (more…)