sonora2sonoma

I don’t want to know his name/he should not be given fame

*

I don’t want to know

the name of the gunman

who killed those people

at a college in Oregon.

***

I don’t care if he suffered from loneliness

or was plagued by anger

or was misunderstood as a youth.

***

And I’m not interested in how the shooter

went from being a disaffected teenager

to a taker of teenage lives.

***

and I most certainly do not want to know his name

or be made aware of any of the background details

                of his story.

I’ve heard this story too many times.

Let him rot in obscurity, I say!

***

I just want to live in a country

where politicians

don’t sway to the paranoid pleadings

of those whose mission

                is to protect what they’ve accumulated

from those they feel threatened by

come hell or high water!

***

I want to live in a country where rational people

are allowed to make sensible decisions

without obfuscation, intimidation

or other forms of dishonest or misleading interference.

                all of which are designed to distract people from the ample evidence

                                based on repeated observations (x10)

                of how unlimited accessibility to firearms

                                leads to unspeakable tragedies.

Most of which could have been prevented!

***

I don’t want to live in a country where the right to bear arms

trumps the sanctity of life

where the “freedom” to own as many assault rifles, or other firearms as pleases you

overrules common sense, the public good and all other metrics of reasonableness.

***

The “status quo” today as it relates to the right to bear arms (thank you NRA)

is the very thing

that makes it possible

for people like the Roseburg shooter

                to seek fame and recognition

                or absolution or vindication

                or whatever other kind of get-out-of-jail-free card the shooter envisioned

                                (or, most likely, didn’t)

                by the taking of lives

                that weren’t his to take.

***

Such a deeply personal act

taken in such an impersonal way

by someone who thought that their hurt

                was big enough

to override the rights of other people–

                to deprive them of their lives

                to rob their families of their presence in their lives today, tomorrow, and forever

***

I don’t want to know

the name of the gunman

who killed those people

at a college in Oregon.

*

Tim Konrad

02 October 2015