Are there many more crazy people in the world now or do they just get more attention? When they do something totally insane, do people in the news just make it more well known or are there really more crazy people running around doing crazy things? I begin to wonder about this each time some crazy person commits a new insane crazy violent act such as happened in Norway last weekend. Norway seems like the last place on earth where a man with a gun would murder nearly 100 people at one time. Norway has always seemed like this idealic, bucolic setting with vast fjords and wide expanses of fields and peace loving people who just wanted everyone to get along. Then, the mold is broken when one crazy guy takes a gun and begins to shoot people just because he thinks they need to be shot. I thought crazy stuff like this only happens in America where everyone has a gun in his or her backpack, suitcase, purse, or pocket. We are the ones with the handguns everywhere and the Europeans are the ones who do not have them in the same proportion that we do.
Each time I cross the Canadian border, I always figure that I will get the going over because I am a Texan. I figure the Canadian authorities figure that Texans cannot go anywhere without a gun and if a Texan claims to not own a gun then said Texan must be lying. (They must have read the story that Rick Perry jogs with a gun strapped to himself so he can pick off coyotes along the way.) We crossed the border to enter Alberta a decade or two ago while on a camping trip and the friendly border guard took a look at my Texas plates and then asked me 3 times if I had a gun. When I said I did not and then declared to him that I did not even own a gun (a bad move on my part) he and his associates searched our van thoroughly taking all the dirty clothes out of the laundry basket (we were camping after all) and finally gave up and let us pass. I never tell crossing guards that I do not own a gun. I just tell them I left it at home. It makes the crossing much easier.
Guns don't kill people. Crazy people kill people. At least that is the line I have heard in recent years when gun control is being considered. I guess they are right who say that. A gun just does not pick itself up and shoot someone. Some crazy person must be behind it so that it will work. This time a crazy man used a gun so many times that a massacre resulted from his actions. Perhaps nothing could have been done to stop the actions of this insane person who wore a police uniform while he did his killing. At least the Norwegian authorities forbade his request to allow cameras in the courtroom while he was being interviewed. They plan to keep him in solitary confinement for four weeks. Maybe by then he will be so glad to see a human he will want to talk privately to someone about how he got so crazy.
I mourn for those who died in Norway and for their families who have lost loved ones because of one person's insanity. I mourn for the peaceful people in a beautiful country who now have lost a bit of security that they thought they had. I mourn for the parents of that crazy young man who committed the murders and now are plagued by what their son did to innocent people. I mourn for us all around the world because now we have one more senseless tragedy to have to file away in our memory banks to go along with all the others. I mourn the loss of the time when we had so much to worry about and life seemed so much more simple. My mourning is so much more simple than is that of those poor people in Norway. My mourning will end soon with something else to catch my attention. Theirs will never end.
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