I keep thinking about the Colorado shootings. It makes my heart ache. All the victims: the people who got killed, the people who got shot and will live, the people who were there and escaped – using the term very loosely because nobody who was there escaped – the people who had to go to the hospital or morgue to identify some child or loved one, Holmes’ parents. All victims of a man who spent alot of time and energy to destroy lives.

I keep asking myself, Why would anybody do this? I guess that it is the obvious question, I guess that it is the questions almost every asks, it certainly is the question the police are asking. Yea, sure, he is nuts, but then I hold the position that anybody who kills somebody is nuts. But being nuts just begs the question, Why did he think he was doing it? I can understand the guys who flew into the World Trade Center; I have never been that dedicated to anything, but I can understand it it. I can even sort of understand Columbine or Virginia Tech, But this is incomprehensible to me.

This was not a suicide: this was not somebody so unhappy they wanted to take their life and then added as many people as they could. James Holmes – does anybody call him Jim? – went out and bought some guns and also bought body armor to protect himself as much as possible, he then went out and shot as many – totally random – people as he could. He seemed to want to live through this. He then told the police that he had booby-trapped his apartment.  Why would anybody do that?

Ever since Charles Whitman climbed up the Texas Tower, we hear the same thing, “He was really shy, really quiet, but really nice and sweet.” I read somewhere that you can tell how likely someone is to have road-rage by the number of bumper stickers they have on the back of their car. But I think that the scary people are the ones who are shy, quiet, and sweet.

As an aside, the even more scary people are like Luke O’Dell of the National Association for Gun Rights who took the opportunity to say  “Potentially, if there had been a law-abiding citizen who had been able to carry in the theater, it’s possible the death toll would have been less.” Scary because they are trying to change public policy and – in many places – seceding. Imagine that nightmare, a shootout in a dark movie theater between several idiots as a way to cut the carnage. End aside.