When I get to work in the morning, I normally listen online to Q99's Breakfast Club with Dick Daniels and David Page, at least until everyone else gets there, around 8:00 a.m. This morning, they mentioned that there was a story about a shooting near Smith Mountain Lake while a local news crew was filming a live spot. They had seen it posted on Facebook and that's where I looked. Someone had posted the video, which I think is still available online. It looks like a normal live shot, panning over the area, and coming back around to the reporter, Alison Parker, and the lady she was interviewing. Then you hear gunfire and all I can remember hearing is the young reporter screaming and shrieking. Finding out later that she and her cameraman were killed and that most likely, their last moments on earth were filmed and so many people had seen it? Those moments, so filled with terror.
I'm not a fan of guns. Never have been and don't imagine I ever will be. I'm not against people having guns for protection or hunting, but when someone tries to argue that having an arsenal's worth of weapons or that owning semi-automatic or completely automatic weapons are their 2nd Amendment rights, I have to strongly disagree. I saw enough guns on April 16th to last me a lifetime.
Even if you're not local, you've probably heard about the two journalists killed today during a live interview on a morning program. I really feel for the anchor, Kimberly McBroom, who was watching and listening live, to hear and see what happened to her colleagues. (Kimberly McBroom (née Shifflett) was a childhood friend in elementary school.)
I read that the young cameraman, Adam Ward, who was killed chose to come to VT, starting his freshman year in August after the April 16th shootings. He graduated from VT, went out into the world, and ended up being killed by someone who seems to have idolized the VT shooter.
I'm sure there will be (again) a debate on gun control and better safe guards to keep the mentally ill from getting access to weapons. But my personal opinion is that this shooter was not mentally ill. He was just plain evil and full of hate. He idolized the VT shooter, who also seemed to find someone to hate and blame everywhere he went? How do you keep guns out of the hands of someone who is just plain evil?
My mom mentioned that WDBJ had a police presence today, to make sure that their employees were safe. I reminded her that we had that, too, on April 16. We were escorted through the building and passed off to another officer at the exit. I wonder how many of you have been escorted away from your place of work, which might also be the scene of a mass shooting by a SWAT officer?
After that, my sister asked me if I couldn't find a job "somewhere safer"? Even then, I asked her exactly where she felt safe. In the years since, there have been shootings at "on your corner" political events, an elementary school, movie theaters, an historically black church .... and which ones have I left out? The ones that fade into the ether because there are just so many of them?
You can regulate who has guns. You can label people as mentally ill. But the one thing you cannot label or regulate is hate. Hate is its own contagion, building within someone. How in the world do you attempt to fix hate? How do you recognize those that are so full of hate that all they can do is blame everyone around them? What can anyone do?
Please keep the victims' families and friends in your thoughts and prayers. Don't give the shooter one more second of your thoughts.
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