Twisted

As you know early this morning, 71 patrons at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado during a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" were injured when a gunman opened fire in front of the theater.  Virtually nothing yet is known about the shooter, James Holmes, a student at the University of Colorado Medical School, but the media from the very first second has already tried to blame the mass murder on the teachings of political conservatism.

Brian Ross, a reporter for ABC, tried to make the claim this morning that James Holmes was the same James Holmes that appeared as a member of a Colorado Tea Party (ABC and Ross later retracted the story as they discovered that the latter Holmes was 52; the shooter James Holmes is 24).  The rush to judgement by the media is nearly identical to what occurred during the shootings in Arizona last year, which took 6 lives.  As with Holmes, the media then tried to connect Jared Laughner to the Tea Party without any shred of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding (this rush to judgment was notably absent regarding the mass murder committed by Maj. Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood). 

Here is Charles Cooke on how we should view this shooting:

What happened in Colorado in the early hours of this morning was not a “tragedy” but a willful act of mass murder. Beyond his age, name, and ethnicity, nobody yet knows who the shooter is, or why he chose to do what he did. In my view, this is a blessing, albeit a temporary one; for, as has been the way in recent years, once his party registration, television-viewing habits, and random scribblings become known to the public, all sorts of hysterical speculation and unlettered accusations will burst forth.

Whole groups will be vilified, blame will be apportioned to those many times removed, and the shooter will be partially absolved of blame by those who prefer to see fault in video games or talk radio or political rhetoric or anything else that can be conscripted to explain why terrible things happen to good people. Few will point out that unless someone commits an atrocity in the name of an ideology — Timothy McVeigh, for example — their political beliefs are wholly irrelevant. Even in cases where a killer is motivated by something specific, to draw general conclusions is most often folly. America is not the land of collective guilt, and mass shootings should carve out no exception. Those few people who have already jumped on the crime to hit out at their boogeyman of choice are fools.

And here is Paul Mirengoff:

Killing sprees are sometimes political acts. The shooting of military personnel at Fort Hood by a Muslim extremist is a good example. But murder doesn’t become political just because the murderer belongs to a political party or movement, or a particular religious group. Thus, without more, it shouldn’t even matter if today’s gunman belonged to the Tea Party or any other large organization or movement.

As David Gelernter, himself the victim of the unabomber, says the fitting response to a terrible crime like today’s is silence or prayer. The appropriate response is not mindless politically-based speculation that only reinforces the fear that our culture and politics both have taken a grievously wrong turn.

As both Charles and Paul point out, the political beliefs of the ones committing the atrocities are truly irrelevant other than if they actually understood themselves to be carrying out a political aim.  And -- this cannot be repeated too many times -- it is beyond absurd to draw a general conclusion about a whole group from an act committed by one person in that group (e.g., former Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican, had sexual liaisons with young pages in the U.S. House; therefore all Republicans are child molesters).  Isn't it better to see the low in reference to the high rather than the other way around?

Politics aside, the response to days like today should most definitely be prayer -- asking God what He wants us to see in this and what our response to it should be moving forward.