It was an extremely sad night in Aurora, Colorado on July 20 when a lone gunman entered a packed theatre and started shooting people at random.
When the cowardly attack was over, 12 people lay dead and about 50 others were wounded, some with life threatening injuries.
The horrific incident could have even been more deadly as, apparently, the assault weapon the alleged gunman was using jammed before he could use all his ammunition.
Some serious questions need to be asked following this terrible, senseless shooting that shocked Americans and the world community.
Why? Why does a person kill like that? Kill innocent people who never did him any harm? Kill people at random who were just out to watch the most anticipated movie of the summer ‘The Dark Knight Rises’?
Of course, you’ll hear about a moment of ‘temporary insanity’ in cases like this. But the point is that this guy spent months planning this shooting. He also had a number of explosive devices planted at his apartment to kill police after the incident was over. So, his thought process was working well even though it was for an evil purpose.
Of course, we will never know the true motive for the crime. Humans are the only members of the animal species that kill for pleasure and maybe the shooting was committed for this simple reason.
The next big question is, what will be done to curb or stop incidents like this from happening again? Will it lead to any serious steps to some sort of gun control in the United Sates?
You may have heard some of the politicians say last week that this is not the time to talk about gun control. Well, when is the time to talk about it? Let’s hope that these 12 innocent people did not die in vain and the tragic incident will lead to some form of stricter gun control in the country, especially on assault weapons.
Why does the average person need an assault rifle anyway?
Speaking about politicians, it’s interesting to note that even the most powerful man on the planet, the president of the United Sates is afraid to take on the National Rifle Association to bring about effective gun control laws. It’s really sad isn’t it.
And the States doesn’t have a monopoly on gun related violence. At a barbecue in Toronto recently two innocent people were killed by gunfire when the party got out of control.
So, what can be done to stop all this senseless violence?
John Fogerty (of CCR fame) sings a song he called ‘Gunslinger’. A verse in the song goes: This used to be a peaceful place, decent folks, hard working ways. Now they hide behind closed doors, afraid to speak their minds.”
That last lyric is really interesting – afraid to speak their minds. But it’s true, we’re afraid to talk about these incidents in meaningful ways. We light our candles and place teddy bears near the crime scene and pretend that’s enough to do about it.
It’s not and the public and politicians need to become more aggressive in preventing them.
Another line in Fogerty’s song goes: ‘We need a gunslinger, someone tough to tame this town’.
He may be referring to the old west when a lone gunman would often come into a lawless town and clean it up by getting rid of the bad guys.
That’s what we need now – some strong, determined leaders who are not afraid to make tough laws to clean up our streets and society to make us all safe from these types of sad incidents.
Because if we don’t it will happen again as sure as all rivers flow to the sea.
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