Another "isolated incident"

So now we can add one more to the long list of irritating, obnoxious elements involved in going to the movies. Sure, just another isolated incident. Just like when Joesph Goebbels released live mice into a theater showing All Quiet On The Western Front in Berlin and tossed stink bombs in just for good measure. Whether James Holmes had an ideological agenda to terrorize and intimidate people into not seeing The Dark Knight Rises is basically irrelevent. The result is the same, I am sure not going to the theater again for a long time. Whether this particular maniac took rush limbaugh's tirade about batman being a liberal conspiracy to defeat mitt romney to heart or not, the result is the same. People are dead, more are wounded, and many more will suffer shock and psychological damage from this armed attack on civilians.
Recently I saw a guy with a pistol strapped to his belt coming out of the theater when I took my wife to see a show. At the time it just made me really anxious, then I thought about how it was only a matter of time. How many times do I have to write about violence? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven and that's not nearly all of them. Sure, this is a big country and your chances of being murdered by a crazed gunman are pretty small, but think of all the massacres that Americans have endured since the late 1990s. When combined with all the "regular" gun homicides, it is becoming just a regular fact of life.
My friend Ms. Solidarity had this to say this morning. "Dear West Bend wingnuts:
Tell us again after todays tragedy why pushing for guns in the library was such a good idea?
Just sayin." And: "I just thought of somethin else..its easier to obtain a gun in this country then get mental health care if your severely mentally ill.God help us." Guns are a cancer in America, and it has so metastisized that we can't even approach the problem without self-described maniacs screaming bloody murder about it.
It is a problem, not an issue. Gun violence and the terror it causes should not have a defending side, but it does. Sickeningly, this is not even the first gun massacre this week! Don Hamel wrote a moving plea to rachet down the rhetoric and passion around guns. He echoes my thoughts pretty well by writing: "I don’t want to be shot. I do not want anyone I love to be shot. I don’t want people I don’t particularly care for to be shot. I do not want harm to befall strangers, even if their beliefs do oppose mine. Outside of war, shooting is the most preventable tragedy on the face of the earth.
That is not a political position."
Can our local gauleiter, owen robinson, name a single instance when more guns in more hands have led to fewer deaths or "isolated incidents?" But why is it that a guy shooting 17 people at a bar in Alabama gets very little coverage while another guy shooting 50 people in a movie theater is front page, all day news? It is insane to think this is becoming a regular, routine part of American discourse. And irresponsibility is rife. "Get there first!" As drudge passes on without the slightest bit of shame that holmes was a Democrat. Bullshit! And you had to know at least one insane tea party congressman would roll "Christian victimhood" and concealed carry into one utterly tactless response.

"The blade itself incites to violence" It will never end.