Four days ago a 20-year old man took his mother's assault weapons, killed her, and then went to a local school and killed twenty children, ages 6 and 7, and six adults before he killed himself. So much has come up for me since then besides the tears. The senselessness of it, the grief of parents losing a child, the struggle of young children to get their arms around such a profound loss. Our whole country and probably the world are in mourning now, and we are all at a loss about what we can do. Right now all I can do is think and cry about it. However, as I watched Bob Schieffer'smorning talk show yesterday while I was working out, two things came up for me aside from the enormity of the numbers of guns bought and sold in our country and the senseless numbers of gun murders over 32,000 a year. It is totally clear that we have the right to bear arms. There is no way we'll be able to remove guns from our country. That said, can't there be a better way to control them. The people … [Read more...]
Another young life cut short — for no reason
Steve Lopez wrote a column in the LA Times today about the murder of a 17-year old in near downtown LA last week, named Lily Burk. I've been following the story and what he says is so true. It is also beyond his understanding how such horrible news affects the parents how could a parent continue to breathe if they lose a child by violence or illness or accident, he asks. It's always been beyond my understanding as well. What is so important about this story is that her alleged murderer is a mentally ill homeless person, in and out of institutions, and had he been incarcerated or hospitalized this wouldn't have happened. It was just so random that she and the murderer were on the same street at the same time. And, right now the California budget is going to take more cuts which will possibly mean more folks being released from jail because California can't afford to keep them there. So that goes to Lopez' question should we keep our children in a bubble to eliminate the risk of … [Read more...]