Once again Colorado has been hit with a disturbed young man who suddenly massacres a group of people. Twelve people are dead, including a six-year-old child. Another 30 or so remain hospitalized with gunshot wounds.
Yesterday I woke up to stories of ABC News first announcing that maybe there was a Tea Party connection, then later correcting themselves. Today I woke up to a story coming from a Florida private investigator who claims that James Homes is a member of the Occupy Movement’s “Black Block” fringe. We’ll have to see how this plays out, but the evidence that I read this morning is flimsy at best.
Should we really care, though? Why is the first reaction of so many people to politicize this and make it about whose team was bad? It strikes me that this is a cop-out of the worst sort and that by disassociating ourselves from what happened and trying to associate it with someone else, all we are really doing is running from the problem.
When I look at this tragedy, two questions spring to mind, and neither one of them has anything to do with Occupy or the Tea Party.
First, if James Holm was as sick as he seems to be, why didn’t the system identity him much earlier and provide help so that something like this would never happen? Second, how can a young man buy, over four months, four weapons, including the civilian form of an assault rifle, 6000 rounds of ammunition, ballistic armor, tear gas, and explosive materials without this prompting someone to go and ask him a few questions?
I don’t know, but politicizing this doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do. It’s time to use our big boy words and have a big girl discussion about what happened. He-said she-said needs to be left on the playground with the rest of the little kiddies.