Colorado Call And Response

Once in a while in society, someone will lose their mind and kill innocent people around them. It happens and while tragic, attempting to place the blame on some external societal trend is almost always mistaken. This morning a guy shot up a theatre in Colorado showing The Dark Knight Rises. ABC attempted to link the shooter to the Tea Party (they were mistaken); Breitbart.com made a similar attempt to link him to the Democrats (also mistaken) but the facts as they stand suggest only that the guy saw the other Batman movies, and he's not stable.

Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) ventured the opinion that lack of faith in God caused this.

"Some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedom, that that was important," he said. "Whether it's John Adams saying our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people ... Ben Franklin, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters ... We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country."

Ernest Istook, the host of the show and a former Oklahoma congressman, jumped in to clarify that nobody knows the motivation of the alleged Aurora gunman. Gohmert said that may be true, but suggested the shootings were still "a terrorist act" that could have been avoided if the country placed a higher value on God. 

"People say ... where was God in all of this?"

Well sir; I was taught that God is everywhere. Thus, God abetted the gunman. But since I'm an atheist now (not a violent one) I'm more inclined to think that it's bad brain chemistry, and preventing these kinds of tragedies is no more possible than preventing earthquake or meteor strike.