Thoughts On The Aurora Shooting

Every time one of these tragedies happen, we all hope it will never happen again. People talk about how if the gun laws were harsher this wouldn't have happened. And the media bleeds the story dry as they try and find out why this happened, while refusing to ask itself the question if its their sensationalizing of a previous mass-murder that didn't cause this.

As the media goes into its feeding frenzy when a tragedy such as this is happening, there's always one of them in the audience watching all the attention that's being given to the killer. They see the killer going out in a blaze of glory [only this one didn't die]. I saw the media speculating it happened because The Dark Knight Rises is a violent film. It could have been a midnight showing for Mary Poppins and it still would have happened. It was a group of people who were happy and excited and this guy wanted to inflict misery and pain on them to make himself feel good. It wasn't the movie, it was the media announcing a place where a group of happy and excited people were waiting anxiously for the midnight showing of a movie they were looking forward to seeing. A place where he could strike and make a name for himself.

It's a horrible thing, but there are people out there that can only feel good when they're hurting someone. Have you ever been walking down the street when someone you've never seen before yells out the window at you that you're ugly or you're fat or whatever insult they can think to throw at you and then they drive off laughing their head off? You didn't do anything to make this person insult you, you just had the misfortune to be in this persons path as he tried to hurt you and make you feel miserable so he could feel good. It's the same thing with these people who go in and shoot a bunch of people. As sick as it is, it makes them feel good doing it. As the saying goes misery loves company. Making someone else as miserable as they are makes them feel better. And I do think the reason a lot of them kill themselves may not be so much about not wanting to pay for what they did, but knowing they'll never be able to feel this good again. As they take their last breath it's with the knowledge that the media will make them famous for what they did and people will be talking about them for a long time to come.

I've seen a lot of people going on about the gun laws and how they should be made harsher like that would have prevented this tragedy from happening. That's looking for a quick fix and denying the underlying truth. Even if this man had no access to a gun, he would have found another way to do it. It wasn't the gun that caused the tragedy, it was this man. The media has been promoting the opening of The Dark Knight Rises for weeks and somewhere down the line this guy started planning his attack on the midnight opening for the film. If he didn't have access to a gun, he could have just as easily gone down to his local liquor store, bought a case of cheap wine, and made a bunch of Molotov cocktails to throw at the crowd gathered. Same result as the gun. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. If this man didn't have access to a gun, he would have found another way to create the misery and mayhem he desired to create by attacking the people waiting to see the movie.

So what if anything can be done to stop these tragedies from happening over and over again? Well, the government likes to impinge on our basic rights, like forcing us to buckle our seat belts whether we choose to or not and face a penalty for it if we don't. How about lobbying some similar restrictions at the media when it comes to reporting these tragedies? Maybe they could call it a morally decent clause.

I have to admit I have no respect for the media and it started as a child when I was home sick from school the day Ronald Reagan got shot and for hours they kept replaying over and over him getting shot to the point I felt nothing when I saw it happen. That's what they do. They keep replaying a tragedy over and over again until your initial horror at what happened vanishes and you get sick to death seeing it and just want them to stop. They did it when the space shuttle exploded. They did it when the World Trade Center was attacked. They don't care what kind of pain they're causing the families at home watching for news about their loved ones as they make them watch the tragedy happen over and over again. All they care about is bleeding the tragedy dry for everything its worth. There's a good reason the media is likened to a pack of vultures picking the bones clean of whatever tragedy they're covering. It's because it's true.

I remember when I was living in San Francisco and the Yosemite Park Murders happened and the press asked the family of one of the victims how they felt to know their family was dead. What kind of question is that to ask? How do you think they feel? Most of these people forget common decency in their need to bleed the tragedy dry of every little emotion that they can. They need some kind of law to make them behave in a decent manner.

Will this be the last time a tragedy like this happens? We can only hope. Maybe it'll be different this time since the perpetrator didn't take the easy way out and kill himself. Maybe the potential mass-murderers out in the viewing audience thinking that that's the way they want to go out, will think otherwise when one of their brethren has to pay for the action of their crime.

If the media wants to do something positive, maybe they could educate people about the warning signs someone planning to do this might display. There has to be some signs, especially when they're getting ready to do something like this. Then maybe someone could tip off the authorities and stop something like this from happening again.