i've seen a lot of emails, blog posts, facebook stuff, etc about the horror of the killing rampage at VA-Tech. Yes, I agree it was horrible. But I honestly can't really get myself to feel a tremendous amount of grief. or fear. Maybe I'm just an insensitive person too caught up in my own life. I'm being completely honest here. I can't relate to students in Blacksburg, a town I've never been to, and fortunately haven't added school shooting to the list of paranoid fears in my head. Honestly, memories of the LIRR shooting by Colin Ferguson still loom a lot heavier when I think about random acts of violence.

And that's just what this was- random. Unless they can find evidence of some widespread condition or problem that can explain a large percentage of the variance, of the reason why the shooter would do something like this, it will remain a random act of violence.

In general, I have been much more concerned about ongoing large scale problems, violent and otherwise, which have been documented to kill more people than the crises, the anomalies. It's hard to get over the shock value of the school shooting, the sexiness of the car accident. But if you think of the numbers of people being killed every day by diarrheal disease, the rising tide of death in Iraq (the 127 killed in bombs today), it tends to put things in perspective.

Not to say that I don't often awaken with a startle in the middle of the night for fear of violent night intruders (based on personal experience). So maybe I AM just insensitive. Who knows. But come on, if we're praying for these victimes, the least we can do is also pray for the families of folks sent over to Iraq. and for the folks themselves.

Update: So, there was obviously a lot in this post that was highly insensitive and reductive. Now that more information about the shooter's mental state have become clear, I am embarrassed by some of the earlier assumptions I made and hope that I will not be judged based on. Yet, I have decided not to remove this post, as it remains accurate to my feelings at the time.