Don't Shoot Me, Shoot Your Boss!

George Sodini capped a long and bitter blog by gunning down a number of defenseless people in an LA Fitness center. What he did was evil and senseless.

Evil is what it is. We do not like it but our religious nature gives some framework to understand it. There are people that enjoy making other people suffer, enjoy making the innocent die. There will always be evil.

It is senseless that troubles us, at the moment. Some may say that senseless violence is another sort of evil, but you can have senseless cooking or senseless purchases, and so, it seems that by itself senselessness is not evil. It is the violence.

We like to pretend that we believe that any act of violence is senseless, even though nearly every movie we watch seems to say that some violence is actually pretty sensible after all. Comedian Chris Rock once famously commented that "he understood", when describing the motive behind a celebrity murder case. Judging by the amount of people that laughed, most Americans did too.

Lately though, there are murders and shootings that make absolutely no sense whatsover.

The story is the same - some guy is mad about something, so, he goes and shoots or blows up somebody completely different. George Sodini was apparently mad at his mother, so he shot up a bunch of women that he never even met. Richard Poplawski was upset over Barrack Obama, and that he had lost his job at a glass factory, so he shot three random police officers that he never met. Even Timothy McVeigh, was mad about the FBI and the IRS, so he blows up a federal day care center. Christopher Wood was $450,000 in debt, so he shot his wife and three young children, aged 5, 3, and 2. Why not shoot the bill collectors? Ervin Lupoe lost his job along with his wife. So, he shot her.

It just doesn't make any sense.

We would prefer that people who are upset over losing a job, financial ruin or the other stresses of life not kill anyone. There are plenty of us who have been laid off or let go or cut off. While there may be times that, for the sake of humanity, one might well have to take one for the team and go out in a hail of bullet flying glory, we suspect that this is the case far less than our present death toll would suggest.

If you happen to be reading this, and are bent on shooting up a mall, or a restaraunt or movie theater or fitness center, no matter what we say, we ask, "Don't kill anyone." But if you are hell bent on going on a killing rampage, at least help your people out and don't shoot at all. If you are upset about liberals trying to take your guns away, the last thing that helps is if you open fire on a crowd of the entirely innocent. If you are going to go postal, go postal with a bunch of swords or chopsticks or fried chicken or something.

Don't shoot us.

Your child did not fire you so that we could send your job overseas. Your child is not the one calling you twenty times a day to get your bank's late fees and high interest money back. Your child didn't cheat on you. Your child is not the one trying to take your guns away, pollute your environment, or even plant chips in your head. And as for the rest of us, most of us reading this site did not vote for Nancy Pelosi. That's not to say that bill collectors and managers that offshore are not innocent. We certainly are not suggesting that they deserve to be shot. We're just saying, we didn't cheat on you, your wife is not the IRS, and your two year old child didn't fire you.