What's wrong with people?

While we were having an active shooting drill at McCook Community College yesterday, a real active shooter was wreaking havoc at Umpqua Community College, just a couple of miles away from the peaceful, scenic town of Roseburg, Oregon. I read about this on the Internet while I was at work and when I left to go to afternoon happy hour, a woman who I know and respect walked in, saw the news on the television and said "What's wrong with people?" And I think we're all required to think that question through.

The death and injury toll are still uncertain at the time of this writing but it appears that at least nine people died and at least seven people were wounded. These were traditional and non-traditional students going to college trying to better themselves and train for an uncertain life ahead. The gunman was a 26-year-old white male. I don't think about the number of people killed and injured in a tragedy like this, I think about their loved ones. I think about the loss they're suffering that's unimaginable to someone who has never suffered it. I think about the hole in their heart that they will have to live with forever. I think about parents having to bury their children due to the crazed actions of a person that perhaps their children didn't even know. I think about the destruction of the social contract, the obliteration of the freedom we have of living in America where these things aren't supposed to happen, yet happen here more than in any other country in the world and I, along with others, continue to ask why.

The Monday after Thanksgiving weekend 14 years ago is etched in my heart forever. I was awakened at six o'clock in the morning by a knock on the door. I thought maybe the woman I was seeing at the time had forgotten her key so I stumbled sleepily to the front door and opened it. When I saw who was there, I fell immediately to my knees because it was two Marines in their dress blues and I knew there was only one reason why they came to your house. They were there to report that my oldest son, Brandon, had died while serving in the Navy and stationed in San Diego. They insisted that I call a friend to be with me before they left so I called Pete Smith, who was the manager of J.C. Penney's at the time. When he got to my apartment, I asked him to call then Vice President Richard Tubbs of the college to tell him what had happened and he made that call which must have been so hard on him. My younger two boys idolized their older brother and the youngest son, Will, has tattoos all over his body in remembrance of Brandon. It was a loss that's seared in our hearts forever.

And so it is for those parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters and friends of the people killed yesterday. They will never get over it either but many other people seem to put it in their rear-view mirrors and go on with their lives as long as this terrible loss didn't happen to them.

I watched last night as the President made a plea to the people of this country as heart-felt as any President ever has and yet so many in this country will dismiss his words and feelings because he's a Democrat, or a Black, or a Black Democrat who's the CEO of the United States of America. He talked about how the opposition is already planning their counter attack and based on prior behavior, he's probably right. But this isn't about Second Amendment rights and it isn't about gun control. A certain faction in the body politic of America has claimed that Obama has wanted to take their guns since he was elected President in spite of a total lack of evidence that supports that claim. This isn't about gun control, it's about people control. This isn't an argument to take away people's guns; it's an argument to keep guns out of the hands of those who pose danger to others. This is about crazy people having access to weapons and what we can do to prevent it and we have to find those ways.

The NRA always becomes intransigent, claiming that when incidents like this occur, we need MORE guns instead of fewer guns so those people in harm's way can defend themselves but people who ARE armed don't have a very good history of being able to do that. No one is suggesting or HAS suggested that guns be taken away from law abiding people. Millions of Americans keep guns for sport, to hunt and to protect themselves and their families and no one in government is targeting those people.

We have become numb to these mass murders. I thought at the time that if the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where little children were murdered in cold blood, didn't change the nation's attitude about what we should do , then nothing would and I'm still of that mind. My son, Will, is too. He told me on the phone last night that he didn't think anything would happen in our lifetimes to change ANYTHING. If it's not OUR child, we don't feel the loss and the pain and so tomorrow is the same as today. But when it IS our child, everything changes. Dick Cheney was against equal rights for gays until his daughter told him SHE was gay and now he is a gay rights supporter. We love and care about our children. We want them to always be well and happy. We don't want anything bad to ever happen to them. But terrible things are happening to them now on a regular basis and we still choose to do nothing about it.

Does it have to be YOUR child that's harmed, maimed or killed before you care enough about the problem to finally take action?