Editorial: Murder in a Colorado movie theater
What are the lessons of horror?
What are we to take away from an episode of senseless violence, an instance of inexplicable random killing and terror?
A crowded theater in Colorado. The frothy excitement of a midnight blockbuster premiere. And into that dark night steps a narcissistic gunman.
He is not the story. He is, we have little doubt, a sick and vengeful man with a shuttered heart, a man unworthy of having his name recited or much remembered except in psychiatric annals and courts of law.
We refuse to recite it here. To recite it only encourages other small and callous men.
The victims are the story. They are the ones with names to remember.
Remember John Larimer and his family and friends in Crystal Lake. Remember the others with candlelight and flowers and longing good wishes. These, the victims of arbitrary happenstance, are the names and the lives to remember.
Remember them and remember their families. Say prayers for the healing of all those who survived and will live with the scars. Give thanks to the heroic rescuers and medics. Give thought to the movie houses that will lose patronage and incur security costs through no fault of their own.
Mourn the violation of our peace of mind. Mourn that we can't even take in a movie without now having to pause to consider what might happen.
Remember all this. The teeming untold victims are the story.
Eventually, there will be theories and presumed motives and there will be explanations. As a nation, we will try to figure out what we can do to stop these occasional sudden horrors, and try, we should; make progress, we will. But in the end, how do you stop a mad man?
Better security? Probably. Stronger mental health intervention? Hopefully, but with today's relentless declines in available funding, we don't count on it. Tighter controls over guns and weaponry? Ideally, but let's not kid ourselves about the magnitude of the challenge.
What are the lessons of horror?
Perhaps there are no real lessons. Perhaps the only lesson is a reminder: Life is uncertain and sometimes woefully unfair, as is the time we're given. We can grieve over that, to be sure, and some of that grieving is inevitable.
But just some.
Otherwise, we're apt to turn around some day and find that what little time we had, we grieved away.
Just as we cannot give in to strategic terror, we cannot give in to random, deranged violence.
What kind of life, after all, would that be?
Use common sense. Pay attention to your surroundings.
Don't ignore troubled friends or family. Get help for them if you can.
Be alert to hints of danger, and notify appropriate authorities about them.
But walk in hope, not in fear.
Show kindness to those you encounter.
Love with all your heart.
Go to a movie.
Live your life.