When Will It End?

NOTE:  This post discusses gun violence, delineating several local and national incidents over the course of the past year.  It has been painful to write and may be equally difficult to read; unfortunately, it most likely will not come as "news" to you.  I do not own any firearms myself, and it is not my intent to "take your guns away from you."  This is simply a matter of personal sadness, framed with the question "When will it end?"

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/12/05/regional/photos-tom-decker-funeral/#1
Collegeville, Minnesota, USA - Officers walk in formation to the funeral of Cold Spring police officer Thomas Decker at St. John's Abbey and University Church on the campus of St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.  Wednesday, December 5, 2012
(Minnesota Public Radio photo/ Jeffrey Thompson)  

Cold Spring, Minnesota is a town in central Minnesota with a population of just over 4,000 people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Spring,_Minnesota).  Wednesday marked the funeral of area native son, 31-year-old Officer Thomas Decker - a son, brother, husband, father of four children, and ten-year veteran of the police force - who was shot and killed in the line of duty on November 29.  His obituary, originally printed on December 3rd edition of the Saint Cloud Times, can be found here.  No one has been charged in his murder as of this writing.  A suspect was released due to insufficient evidence.

This is not the first time that tragedy has befallen the small community.  On September 24, 2003, Cold Spring was the site of the Rocori High School shooting, in which two people were shot and killed.

A four-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old brother in Minneapolis on Wednesday.  To the best of my knowledge, details are still pending in that incident as of this writing.

On December 2, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and completed suicide in front of team officials.  Of course, there was the killing of twelve moviegoers and injuring of fifty-eight others at the premier of The Dark Night Rises in Aurora, Colorado on Friday, July 20, 2012 and the killing of six worshipers at a Sikh temple and injuring of four others in Oak Creek, Wisconsin only sixteen days later.

All of these were committed with firearms.  Particularly in  the case of the Aurora incident, people argued that the shooter's impact could have been minimized if there had been trained firearms users in the audience; however, the Huffington Post reported that it was actually officers from the New York Police Department who injured nine people during an August 24, 2012 shooting at the Empire State Building.

As stated in the introductory paragraph, it is not my goal to "take your guns away from you."  I do not have answers or recommendations.  All I have are questions about reconciling Constitutional protections, the need for personal safety, and my concerns for public safety.

What I can say is this:  comments that I see online every single day in any number of forums suggest two things.  The first is that people are increasingly unwilling to engage in civil discourse, that they jump to extremes early within disagreements, taking positions that are difficult to negotiate.  The second is that we seem to be a vindictive society, suggesting that we should punish people in a manner consistent with their crimes.  I have the luxury of never having had this conviction tested, but to borrow a line from a recent Once Upon a Time episode, it is dangerous to confuse vengeance with justice.  Guns are the epitome of the extreme argument, and compounded with people whose first reaction is to speak of retaliation, that is a dangerous deadly combination.

I pray for your safety as well as for those you love.