In Our Time

In Our Time

America's version of a suicide bomber, in the USA we call them proponents of a NRA culture, kills twelve in Washington, DC. at a Naval complex. The killer was himself killed, and killed by a gun in the hands of a police officer. You know in your heart, the killer realized before he carried his guns into the complex that he would not live past that day. This was the day he decided to commit suicide.

Americans don't strap explosives around their waists as third world crazies do to create mayhem. Our prime means of mayhem continues to be found in the almighty right to carry concealed weapons, and in someways this seems similar to what third world crazies do.

I understand, though, that guns and ammunition do not mix very well. It's been reported that every gun, either displayed or carried at a gun show, must be unloaded and verified unloaded under a penalty of expulsion and other sanctions. Organizers are beginning to understand that massed people and loaded guns are a bad prescription which could lead to mayhem.

Suicide bombers, to a greater extent, target market places where a large number of unsuspecting women and children are caught in the explosion. Here in the states our mass murders seem more selective in their victims by targeting certain segments of the populous just to satisfy some incoherent whim. The bombers may be, in fact, zealots ; whereas, our killers seem to be just truly demented.

Little in life could justify either way of crazed killing. Is our World but a jungle where beasts are being conceived to run wild ? Just because all societies once were tribal, so this is why people can't live together without century old feuds resurfacing ? Am I to think religion has let us down, government also ? Has the worship of moneyed wealth perverted humankind ? I ask.

Ronald C. Downie