This morning, as I lay in bed half-listening to the news on the radio, I came as close to consciousness as I usually get when I heard about a city council meeting that had been disrupted when a disgruntled man came in and shot five people dead. The mayor of the town, some place named Kirkwood, Mo., is in critical condition. As someone who goes to nearly every council meeting in the town he covers, one thought lingers in the back of my mind: it could have been here, and it could have been me.
Looking at a layout map of the council chamber in today's online edition of the St. Louis Dispatch, I realized that two of those killed were sitting in the same place where the journalists are invited to sit in my town's council chamber. Had it happened in my town, I would have been less than 10 feet from the shooter - and in Kirkwood, the man sitting in my place was killed.
This gave me plenty to think about. When I got to work and fired up the computer, I turned to CNN, and saw that Sports Illustrated published a story about a man who showed up to the recent Super Bowl with an AR-15 rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition. Apparently, he was mad about being denied a liquor license for the business he wanted to open (a bar called "Drunkensteins") and wanted to take it out on people who had nothing to do with it. He was far enough in his plan that he was in the parking lot with the gun in his car, but apparently changed his mind at the last minute (thank God - the last thing we need is coverage lionizing the day when the Super Bowl's innocence was forever shattered. Come to think of it, didn't Janet Jackson already take care of that?).
What both of these story make me think is that these men were somehow convinced that their issues would be solved by shooting people who in no way deserved to be shot for their troubles. In the case of the man at the Super Bowl, the people he would have shot at had NOTHING to do with not getting a liquor license. "No one destroys my dream," the shooter allegedly wrote in an 8-page manifesto later found by police. I'm sure I'll hear the old argument that these are more reasons that people shouldn't have guns in this country, but I've stopped believing that. People can cause plenty of chaos without guns. Look at what the Mongols or Vikings were able to accomplish without the slightest hint of gunpowder.
No, what this is indicative of is something far worse: a culture that seems to engender an attitude of "I'll get what I want even if you'll get in my way." I think the Super Bowl guy's quote "No one destroys my dream" sums up things rather tidily. For some reason, grievances are solved with guns instead of more productive means, and I think this is becoming more common as time goes by. For one, I'm getting tired of writing columns after mass shooting events - not because I don't find such columns interesting, but because I've written so many of them by now that I am running out of things to say.
Charles Whitman, the man who shot up the University of Texas from a clock tower one day in 1966 might have been the first, but he wouldn't be the last in a long line of men with a grievance who find no other way in their limited vision to solve their problems with bullets, drowning their misery in the blood of the innocent.
Looking at a layout map of the council chamber in today's online edition of the St. Louis Dispatch, I realized that two of those killed were sitting in the same place where the journalists are invited to sit in my town's council chamber. Had it happened in my town, I would have been less than 10 feet from the shooter - and in Kirkwood, the man sitting in my place was killed.
This gave me plenty to think about. When I got to work and fired up the computer, I turned to CNN, and saw that Sports Illustrated published a story about a man who showed up to the recent Super Bowl with an AR-15 rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition. Apparently, he was mad about being denied a liquor license for the business he wanted to open (a bar called "Drunkensteins") and wanted to take it out on people who had nothing to do with it. He was far enough in his plan that he was in the parking lot with the gun in his car, but apparently changed his mind at the last minute (thank God - the last thing we need is coverage lionizing the day when the Super Bowl's innocence was forever shattered. Come to think of it, didn't Janet Jackson already take care of that?).
What both of these story make me think is that these men were somehow convinced that their issues would be solved by shooting people who in no way deserved to be shot for their troubles. In the case of the man at the Super Bowl, the people he would have shot at had NOTHING to do with not getting a liquor license. "No one destroys my dream," the shooter allegedly wrote in an 8-page manifesto later found by police. I'm sure I'll hear the old argument that these are more reasons that people shouldn't have guns in this country, but I've stopped believing that. People can cause plenty of chaos without guns. Look at what the Mongols or Vikings were able to accomplish without the slightest hint of gunpowder.
No, what this is indicative of is something far worse: a culture that seems to engender an attitude of "I'll get what I want even if you'll get in my way." I think the Super Bowl guy's quote "No one destroys my dream" sums up things rather tidily. For some reason, grievances are solved with guns instead of more productive means, and I think this is becoming more common as time goes by. For one, I'm getting tired of writing columns after mass shooting events - not because I don't find such columns interesting, but because I've written so many of them by now that I am running out of things to say.
Charles Whitman, the man who shot up the University of Texas from a clock tower one day in 1966 might have been the first, but he wouldn't be the last in a long line of men with a grievance who find no other way in their limited vision to solve their problems with bullets, drowning their misery in the blood of the innocent.
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