In the two weeks since I wrote about the Colorado massacre, several more shootings have taken place. I wasn't planning to write about this subject again so soon, but then I saw a segment on the local news about my suburban hometown police department conducting a training exercise for responding to these types of situations. It feels like madness is in the air, and I cannot ignore it.
As I said two weeks ago, this violence is not incomprehensible. We like to pretend that it is, because such a fiction allows us to avoid uncomfortable truths. The perpetrators of these acts are doing the same thing most Americans endorse: using death to solve a problem. We are "shocked" when they do so out of personal frustration, yet we find warfare or abortion perfectly legitimate. Just which one of us is truly insane?
We have a choice. We can put away the guns and bombs, all of them, or we can keep pretending to be shocked when the chickens come home to roost. Which will it be?