Silent night

I was thinking what I could write about tonight when the tragedy in Oregon occurred. And I find myself too numb to write about anything really.

I certainly don't feel like being funny tonight (I know, why is this night different from any other night...).

I've written here how I feel about guns as it pertains to personal safety and protection for the family.

And tonight the news will be filled with all the talking heads on both sides of the issue seeing who can scream the loudest.

But while the gun lobby and gun control advocates both plot their strategies and figure out how best to politicize this, the fact remains at least ten families won't have their loved ones coming home tonight. Many if not all were students. As a parent, it brings me to tears thinking of the pain the families must be going through.

There's always the quest to understand why the shooter did what he did. Reports have said he asked people to stand up and tell him what religion they were, and if they gave the wrong answer they were shot. Survivors say after he asked the question, he just started shooting people randomly, even those who hadn't answered his question.

On social sites, posts by the shooter said, "I'm so insignificant. This is the only way I'll ever get on television." A warning and a reason at the same time.

Some people have said police should've done more to bring him in alive so he could be questioned. But fortunately, their first priority was making sure no one else got shot.

The shooter was - in police parlance - neutralized.

I can't even imagine their pain. I don't even want to try. God bless the victims and their families now and forever. I hope they eventually find some peace and their hearts begin to heal.

As for the shooter, I'm only sorry he wasn't neutralized sooner.

What took so long

I’ve written about the death penalty several times before: here, here, here, here, here and here. So I won’t make this a long post.

It’ll be just long enough to ask why Richard Ramirez, the infamous Night Stalker serial killer, was given the death penalty then allowed to live another 24 years until he died yesterday of natural causes (and I thought there wouldn’t be any good news yesterday).

He'd been sentenced following his conviction for 13 murders, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. During the entire 24 years after his conviction, while taxpayers were footing the bill to house, feed, clothe, educate, exercise, medicate, marry (yes, he got married in prison to a woman with very questionable taste in men) and fight appeals for this monster, ironically all 13 people he murdered remained dead.

Their due didn’t come until yesterday. And even at that it only came in the form of circumstance, not the justice they and their families waited for and were promised.

Ramirez, and people like him – Scott Peterson, the Menendez brothers – fade out of the headlines once their trials are over. It's easy to forget they continue to enjoy breathing the air for decades, while appeal after appeal slog through the overburdened court system. And their victims families have to live with the injury of the loss, and the insult that their tax dollars are supporting the killer years after they’ve been sentenced.

I've mentioned it in other posts, but it seems worth mentioning here again. The argument that somehow putting him to death as a punishment for his crime, and the murders he committed have some kind of moral equivalency is ridiculous by any civilized method of reasoning. It simply isn't the truth.

Richard Ramirez didn’t deserve to die of natural causes. He deserved to die shortly after his conviction, in a chamber filled with gas or with a needle in his arm and the families of his victims as witnesses.

He deserved to die younger than he ever thought he would, and terrified beyond words.

Just like his victims did.

Crazy control

Just when I said I didn't feel strongly enough about anything to post for awhile, this happens.

I didn't hear about the shootings at the midnight show of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado until this morning. My first thought was about the horror and sadness the victims and their families have been exposed to in this tragedy.

My second thought was that my son had gone to a midnight show last night, and thank God it didn't happen here. Of course the sad truth about that thought is it can happen anywhere. Unfortunately, crazy doesn't pay much attention to state borders or jurisdictions.

It knows how to travel when it needs to.

I won't try and make sense of it - there'll be pundits galore all over cable news tonight doing that.

I do know it wasn't the movie's fault. Warner Bros. has cancelled the Paris premiere, and pulled some of the advertising for the film indefinitely. Two things I believe they shouldn't have done.

For all the talk there's going to be about gun control, for me, here's the bottom line: more gun control laws wouldn't have helped. Colorado, like most states, already has a number of them on the books. But when crazy wants a gun, crazy gets a gun. You can argue a background check and waiting period might've prevented this, but crazy is also skilled at not looking crazy when it needs to. Ever see the neighbor interviews?

"He was always such a nice guy." "He was quiet but friendly." "He used to wave and smile when I saw him."

He bought the guns in his possession legally - in compliance with all the gun laws - from local gun shops. He purchased the ammunition legally off the internet. You simply cannot close all the loopholes.

For my pals against the death penalty, this is why you're wrong. He may plead crazy, but he was lucid enough to put on bullet-proof armor and buy tear gas first. There's no reason for this monster to be walking the earth. Hopefully it won't be years before the courts come to this obvious conclusion.

And while I'm on the subject, I think there should be a special category of execution for crimes as horrendous as this. In the same way that labeling something a "hate crime" makes one murder subject to a harsher penalty than the other, I think by creating a separate category of crime we could execute these abominations in the way they deserve to go.

And it isn't peacefully with an I.V. line in their arm.

All I keep thinking about, besides the victims, is the parents. As if there aren't enough reminders in the day you can't protect your children from everything evil in the world.

In the aftermath, all we can do is hug our kids, let them go to the movies and teach them that even though bad things happen, life goes on. Teach them fearful is not a way to live. That's what crazy wants. Don't give it to him.

And for as long as you can, hold the people in Colorado affected by this tragedy in your hearts, thoughts and prayers.

They're going to need it.

UPDATE: TDKR director Christopher Nolan's statement on the shooting:

"Speaking on behalf of the cast and crew of "The Dark Knight Rises", I would like to express our profound sorrow at the senseless tragedy that has befallen the entire Aurora community. I would not presume to know anything about the victims of the shooting but that they were there last night to watch a movie. I believe movies are one of the great American art forms and the shared experience of watching a story unfold on screen is an important and joyful pastime. The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me. Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families."