Under A Blood Red Sky

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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/under-a-blood-red-sky/260147/


The Internet says it is 4840 days and 19.3 miles from Columbine High School, the scene of Colorado's last famous massacre, to the Century Aurora 16 movie theater, the scene of its latest one. If I look today out to the west, I can remember the stricken faces of the parents on April 20, 1999 as they searched local hospitals for their children. And when I looked Friday out to the east I could see the helicopters going back and forth from Aurora's killing field. The faces are different. The names are changed. The candle flames will flicker from other venues in and around Denver. But the grief and the shock and the anger and the senselessness are eternal.

There is no direct cosmic or karmic line between the Columbine shootings, which left 13 dead and 21 wounded, and Friday's mass shooting at a premiere of a Batman movie, which left 12 dead and 58 wounded or injured. This is because the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 forever changed the way our generation copes with mass murder. There is the before. And there is the after. Many people noticed Friday how well the local emergency responders and hospital spokespeople handled their grim duties. That's because they've all been through it before. Over and over again. And so have the rest of us. We are un-drafted veterans of the rituals of sudden death. It's an American thing.

The Atlantic's James Fallows already has said it best: for those of us not directly involved in Friday's mass murder, perhaps the most distressing thing to contemplate today is the realization that we are virtually powerless to prevent it from happening again, soon, somewhere, despite all the hand-wringing and soul-searching that now routinely accompanies these national tragedies. Or, as The New Republic's Timothy Noah put it, America feels terribly sorry for the dead and the wounded caused by gun violence. But not sorry enough to do anything meaningful about it. Don't just think Jared Loughner. Think Jason Coday, too.

This sad fact shrouds mournful days like Friday with a sheen of phoniness. The politicians? They quickly stopped campaigning, said all the right things, and called off the attack ads on television. Evidently it is considered more unseemly to campaign in the hours following a national tragedy than it is for elected officials to fail to limit the scope of such tragedies in the first place. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is right; fly the flags at half-staff, bow your heads in a moment of silence, and then have the courage to convene a meeting on Capitol Hill to determine whether people like James Holmes ought to be allowed to buy tear gas grenades, body armor, and assault weapons.

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1. I'll give this 1 kick. Nt

[RobertEarl]

2. Me too

We need to find a way to keep the crazies from getting weapons.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Well said!

You know, it hadn't really hit me until today, when I saw a local fire station with its flag at half staff. It made me gasp.

Horrible, senseless, incredible waste of life.