None, zilch, Nada. No answer.
I can impart a lot of wisdom at times but this is not one of them. How can one human being visit so much evil on others? How does a parent understand that the child they sent off to school this morning healthy and full of hope will be buried in the next few days? No clue? How do we keep things like this from happening again? We don't know that either, apparently.
In August of 1966 I was a 16 year old growing up in Austin, TX when Charles Whitman killed a bunch of people from the UT tower.Who knew that would be the first of countless mass shootings in our country? Years were spent trying to understand Whitman with little success. Writing it off as a brain tumor causing him to go off is pretty lame. The fact is that anyone that contemplates such evil is deranged. Predicting what a mentally ill person will do is a crap shoot as well.
But we want answers. We want to understand. We think that if we can explain why it happens we can prevent future tragedies. Nope. It seems they happen more frequently.
Here is all I know. People die every day. Some die slowly from illness or disease, and some die because some fool with a gun decides that today is their day. The enormity of the Sandy Hook killings grabs you by the collar and shakes you. But for that parent that loses a child in a car accident the loss is just as intense. Sandy Hook is a stark reminder that our lives are very fragile and that not everyone lives to the rip old age of 80. We must cherish the days we have, thanking God for blessing us so much, and express your gratitude often.
So I pray for those lost yesterday just as I pray for my friend with leukemia. I don't understand either but I continue to believe in miracles. Maybe the next kid contemplating such evil will get the help he needs and a tragedy can be averted. Ignoring him definitely is not the answer. Treatment is needed for both my friend with leukemia and a young man with a mental illness. Ignorance doesn't fix anything!
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