The Virginia Tech Shooting

I wrote this, but was unsure of posting it. Here goes nothing.

I've been avoiding watching and listening to a lot of news, because the stupid way the media saturate the airwaves with the blame game and their assinine questions and suppositions makes me want to hit someone.

So in the interest of public safety, I have refrained from reading watching and listening to more than the basics.

Here's my thoughts, since I know that, as the only person who hasn't voiced his opinion on the goings on in Blacksburg, you're chomping at the bit to know what I think. Who I think is to blame. What I think should have been done instead of what was done.

It's easy.

The person to blame is the guy who did it. Who obviously planned and executed an evil and complex plan. HE IS TO BLAME. Not the gun industry. Not President Bush. Not the lack of foresight of the heads of Virginia Tech.

That scumbag punk is to blame.

We live in a fallen world. And we live in a country with lots of freedoms. Bad combination.

We live in a country with 300 million people in it. A certain percentage of that many people will be criminally insane, but also very clever. Another bad combination.

All we can do is to do our best to live the best lives we can; to take sensible precautions in every area of our lives, and to pray.

After that, I never know if my trip to work this morning will be my last attempt at driving. I don't know if I'll live to see tomorrow.

I tell my family I love them, and I do my best to be the best man I can in every situation. For me, though I fail miserably and often, What Would Jesus Do is not a joke. The slogan has become that, but not to me, even though, like I said, I fail the test miserably and often.

Until the end of the earth, or 'til Jesus comes back to those of us who believe that, there will be criminally insane, and criminals who are quite sane that do things like the knucklehead at Virginia Tech did, or like Sadaam Husein and his sons did.

It's gonna happen. Again and again.

But I tell you this, even though a person can never truly know what they would do in certain situations, I've thought long and hard about things like being cornered or confronted with a gun or knife, or encounter a situation where someone is killing people indiscriminately. I have determined in my heart that if I believe I can possibly save the lives of others, I'm going to try to throw all 300 pounds of me on that person as fast and hard as I can and try with all of my might to kill that person absolutely as fast as I can.

When I was a kid, I had an incredibly violent temper. Those who know me now would never believe the way I could totally become an animal as a young person. I learned to control my temper through the grace of God, and through determination, because when I let loose, I had no memory whatsoever of what I had done. I got into a fight in high school, and later, a girl told me, "I saw the look on your face, and I was sure you were going to kill M." At that point, I realized that as big and strong as I was, that if I lost control, I could kill someone. I did not want that.

But that animal still lives somewhere under the surface, and if I ever encounter a situation like at Virginia Tech, I won't play dead. I won't try to hide if he's killing other people. And at my size, I sure as heck won't be jumping out of any windows either.

I'll just let the animal back out. And unless he puts a bullet in my brain, and stops me instantly, that punk is mine, even if I die.

So all of the second guessing going on in the media, and all of the people starting to find the person or persons to blame, and the politicians on both sides of the gun issue posture for the cameras, is just plain old crap in my opinion. Like Don C. (my Dad) used to say, "All that ain't worth a bucket of warm spit."

I'm getting really, really disillusioned with many Americans. We are becoming a nation of wimps. Where were the guys like on that plane on 9/11 that did the right thing, even if it meant their lives?

I grieve for the families of the dead students and teachers at VT. I also grieve for the parents of that insane moron who killed all of those people.

I just know that I have something within me that is so primitive and brutal, that it scared me into finding a way to control it; and if the next person to try this does it in front of me I'll go down trying to stop the guy, and I WON'T be shot in the back.

That I promise.

If one person can lose his life for evil and to take life, others of us can choose to lose our lives for good to save life too.

But that's just me. I'm not a huge fan of Metallica, I like that style of music a whole lot, but I don't look to them for philosophical truths. But they have an old song called Until It Sleeps. There's a lyric in there that says, "So tear me open, but beware, there's things inside without a care..."

First time I heard that song, I thought, "That's a perfect description of that part of me."

I hope to never have to let that part of me wake up, but I will if I need to. It has always been there, looking over my shoulder anyway.

He's ready.