Why?

I'm glad I don't have a small child living in my house anymore. I wouldn't want to try to explain what happened in Aurora, Colorado to anyone looking to me for answers. I wouldn't want to calm their fears about going to the mall, going to school and, now, going to a movie. I wouldn't know where to start.

When I was ten, President Kennedy was assassinated. I couldn't understand why everyone was crying; why everyone was glued to the television set that had pre-empted all my favorite cartoons. In my teens, I experienced the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in a different way. I mourned the loss of leaders who inspired me. I felt sadness that our country would be deprived of their potential to solve our problems; to bring us together. The one thing I never felt was any sense of personal fear for my own safety.  I never felt the insanity that was cutting short the lives of world leaders would ever trickle down to me.

Since Columbine, since 9/11, since Oklahoma City, that's all changed. I know now that everyone is at risk. Anywhere, anytime, any one of us may encounter some disenfranchised loner with a grudge to settle or a fanatic who wants to drive home a point by obliterating as many lives as he can. And he won't be doing it with a knife or a baseball bat. He won't even be doing it with a revolver or shotgun.  He'll be doing it with an arsenal of automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition he bought at the local Wal-Mart or on the Internet.

Like I said, I'm glad I don't have to explain any of this to anyone.