Yesterday morning started off badly. First off, it was Monday, which we can all agree is never a good thing. Still sore and achy all over from whatever bug I had, I sat down at the computer to try and scare up something to blog about, and wound up reading Bill Whittle's essays on "Seeing the Unseen". Still smarting from that heartening reminder that a large part of my fellow inmates in the monkey cage possess reasoning skills that would do a disservice to a lobotomized Shih T'zu, I sat on the porch with my current reading material, Radical Eye For The Infidel Guy. It should have been funny; it had been the night before, at least. Now it just left me feeling hollow. Yeah, yeah, it was all obvious, but that was the worst part: It was all obvious. Obvious that people can do evil things because they apparently like to believe insane stuff.
I gave it all up for hopeless, showered, and drove to work. I walked in the door and was immediately asked if I'd had my radio on. Setting down my lunch sack and hanging my carbine on the wall, I answered "No, why?"
"Mass shooting. Virginia Tech campus. Twenty-something dead, and counting."
The bottom dropped out. I'm afraid I probably owe my employer whatever he paid my body for being there yesterday, because my heart went home sick right about then. I did my best to phone it in, but it all felt so hollow when one of our regular customers, a retired Winchester engineer, came in to shoot that evening.
"This is a hell of a way for my alma mater to make the national news. We had pistols in our dorm rooms back then. I carried mine on my hip through the cafeteria more than once if I was on my way to the range after eating. We never shot anybody. Why this? Why now?"
What could I say? "Gee, I'm sorry that the human race is crazy, and getting crazier by the day"?
Now comes the media-fueled search for blame, the hounding of the victims and their families, the search for political advantage preached from atop a rostrum built of still-cooling bodies...
If only, if only, if only... If only the killer didn't have a gun. If only Professor Librescu did. If only... If only the killer hadn't chained the doors. If only the students had rushed the killer instead of the exits. If only...
It's days like this it all turns gray. It's days like this I just don't want to play anymore. It's days like this.
The one bright spot is the reaction of people around me. One resolved to carry full-time. Another moved from plinking to shopping for the first handgun and getting certified to carry. Several co-workers are coming to learn the basics in May. Some former sheep are turning Hussite, circling the war wagons and blowing on the arquebus fuses.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way you do Tam. Just empty. And just a thought of all those young people cowering in fear as that bastard had his way with them...I'm man enugh to say I'm near tears.
ReplyDeleteHe OWNED that campus. 60+ felt bullets that day (tens of thousands will feel the mental effects) all from a simple pair of handguns.
And when the killer felt his work was done he checked himself out.
Good people did nothing....
God I feel sick.
-Weer'd Beard
I felt the same way the day I was watching what was going on at Columbine. I watched people that weren't even making an attempt to get in and try to stop those 2 monsters for over an hour plus. Yesterday seemed to have the same results that show we haven't learned things since then. I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT THIS WORLD! We have good people but we lack the desire totake care of things when required...
ReplyDelete( I'm not the most courageous person either - I fall in somewhere between Sir Galahad and Sir Robin but I do know that I wouldn't let that person just execute me... )
Joe R.
Yup.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, I'm phoning it in to the blog. Got so much to say that nothing is gonna get written.
I'm already getting spam from stopthenra.com asking for money.
ReplyDeleteDon't these people have any shame at all?
"Did you have your radio on?"
ReplyDeleteIs that becoming one of the most fearful questions in the English language now, or what?
I just took the Beretta out to the back yard for sixteen shots as fast as I could bang 'em into the hillside.
It was my paraphrase of the line from "Dr. Zhivago":
"I am the only free man on this train."
"Now comes the media-fueled search for blame, the hounding of the victims and their families, the search for political advantage preached from atop a rostrum built of still-cooling bodies..."
ReplyDelete...Which began the same damned day, before we even had a body count.
Or a suspect profile.
Or anything.
Now is not the time for blame.
It's not the time for making points.
Frankly, as a citizen of this nation and a member of this species, I think the time is still to grieve.