WESTBROOK, Minnesota (STPNS) --     Another horrible mass killing took place last Friday morning in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. A heavily armed man allegedly went into a theater where the latest version of Batman was being shown, shot and killed 12 people and wounded another 58 people.

    Police were on the scene and captured the suspect within minutes of the incident. Friday morning radio talk shows were having a field day talking with folks about including so called experts as to what went wrong.



    According to news reports his mother, who lives in San Diego, reportedly told authorities it was her son. She also said she was not surprised.

    I do not have any answers of why it happened, or what might be done to prevent it from happening again. I do know that this country has about 350 million people, it would be terribly presumtuous to not think that a few of them might potentially do something like this.

    Of course the big thing right away from the anti gun people was that we have to ban guns. I do not own a gun, but two of my sons do, and they are very responsible in how they care for and use them. I also have quite a few friends that are gun owners, some might be a little obsessed with owning them, but it is not an obsession motivated by going out and shooting up a movie theater or any other place.

    I do think we have enough gun laws on the books. But, I don’t know if we are doing enough to see that people like this, are not still getting guns.

    I would not begin to speculate what motivated this person to do this, however one of these so called experts said he felt this is the action of a person who is extremely depressed to the point of extreme paranoia. He also said a lot of these shooters had recently failed or been kicked out of college. That is something that happened to this shooter,  and the shooter that killed several people in an Arizona Mall parking lot, and wounded congress person Gabby Giffords.

    But then I think many people have had the experience of seeing or working with youth, or co-workers who they thought could possibly go off the deep end. They might not take someone else’s life, but some might take their own life.

    Of course there is always those that say do you ban knives? Recently an estranged spouse killed his three young daughters using a knife. These people will find a way to do what they do one way or another.

    Then there  are those that want to condemn violent movies, video games, even music. Sorry folks, that stuff is here to stay and we need to live with it. I think when you get down to it, to me it all  boils down to lack of parenting.

    You can not let your children play violent video games, television, or movies every waking moment. I have seen young preschool children playing with hand held video games for hours on end. These kids appear to be totally oblivious to anything else around them.

    Then some of the experts say we need to be more aware of those around us.  But it is pretty hard to tell whether a person is eccentric or a complete loose cannon. Another problem with these people is that they are often very reclusive. In this case, initially no one in the area knew this guy or anything about him.

    Do we start profiling every person who is reclusive? Or anyone who seems a bit obsessed with video games, I think not. I think, no matter what we do, something like this will always be possible. At least we have not become like terrorists in the middle east who strap themselves with explosives and detonate them in a public place.

    Possibly something of value may come of this, since police have the suspect in custody. Perhaps forensic psychologists will be able to get into this person’s mind,  and discover what might motivate a person like this.

    My prayers go out to the victims and their families of this human tragedy.

Have a great week and do good!