As you have probably heard by now, a gunman went on a shooting rampage at a movie theater in Aurora, CO early this morning. It happened shortly after the midnight showing of the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises" started. There are 12 dead, and at least 50 more injured. This is a tragedy beyond comprehension. What would drive someone to do such a dastardly thing?
We mourn for the families affected by this tragedy. The only thing that these people were guilty of was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were simply gathered in a movie theater, waiting to watch the movie that they had eagerly anticipated. And out of nowhere, someone comes into the theater, protected by body armor, and starts shooting, without any regard for human life. It is a tragedy, but that word does not seem adequate to describe the totality of the events that happened in that theater.
But not everyone sees this event as a tragedy. Some see it as a chance to try to gain some sort of political advantage, or to affix blame on a group of people that they do not like. George Stephanolpoulus interviewed James Ross on ABC this morning, and Ross floated the theory out there that this might have been someone within the Tea Party (the same tactic they tried after Rep. Gabriel Giffords was shot).
His "extensive" research was finding a person on a Tea Party website that had the same name as the gunman, and saying that this Tea Party guy was the shooter. Really?? This is the best that this "investigative" reporter could do? Let's ruin someone's life by affixing the blame on them when they had nothing to do with it. I can see a lawsuit coming on this one.
I have seen several message boards and Twitter feeds where people are blaming this on the Tea Party, or Rush Limbaugh, or conservatives in general. Yeah, let's just blame people we do not agree with, because that will make us feel better about ourselves. How can people be consumed with such hatred that they would think this way?
As I write this, the police are at the gunman's house trying to find clues as to why the gunman did what he did. He has booby-trapped his house. This gunman obviously had issues. But we do not know what was going on in his head. We do not know why he did what he did. Why do people fell the need to point fingers at others when tragedies happen? The only person to blame is the person that committed the crime.
The dust has not even settled at this point, and there are already people out there trying to make political points out of this. The illustrious mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, want more gun control laws. He has already demanded of President Obama and Mitt Romney their plans for tighter gun control measures if elected to office. Piers Morgan has come out in favor of tighter gun control laws. So has D.L. Hughley. And we all know that the U.N. wants global gun control laws, and they will use this incident as an example and a rallying point for why that should happen.
We can argue the merits (actually de-merits) of tighter gun control measures, but now is not the time to do that. We need to let the families mourn. We need to let people heal, both physically and mentally.
Many years ago, the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, said that you should never let a tragedy go to waste. In other words, use tragedies to your political advantage. This is the unfortunate mindset of a lot of politicians today. Do what you can to retain your office, even if it means taking advantage of other people's misfortunes.
But we do not need to make this a political battle. The gunman did not care if the people that he shot were Republican or Democrat or Independent or Libertarian or Green Party. He randomly shot people, not caring about political affiliations, or race, or gender, or anything else. He had a complete and utter disdain for his fellowman.
The media today tries to link all news to politics - how will this help/hurt President Obama or Mitt Romney? Well, many of the events that happen on a daily basis are outside the world of politics. They have nothing to with politics, but we live in an age where the media attempt to link tragedies such as this to politics. We need to understand that events like this happen, not because of politics, but because of the sin that we all have within us.
There will be a time in the future where we finally know what happened and why this man decided to shoot people at that movie theater. And we will be able to hopefully have a rational discussion about how to keep this from happening again.
But will it require more legislation? I doubt it. It will only require us to be more vigilant in enforcing the current gun legislation that is already in place.
But this unfortunate tragedy happened in an election year and politicians are going to try to use this to their political advantage. And that is unfortunate. And sad. And it only compounds the tragedy that happened early this morning.
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