Colorado Shootings and Jumping to Conclusions

A horrible thing happened in Colorado at the screening of the new Batman movie. There is all sorts of speculation on why and the truth is, this is not a time for speculation. This is a time when we should show sympathy and wait for more information. This is not a time to use our bigotry to blame this event on anything or any group, it is not the time for pushing our personal agendas.

When I was young my mother pointed something out to me. She showed me that when something horrible happens and many die, the news usually overestimates the number of deaths in the first days. That happened in this case already. Original reports were in the 70s and in the end it is about 50 people who were shot. Same thing happened during 9-11. When something big happens we are so overwhelmed by the event that people have a tendency to misunderstand information and the information is cloudy at best because of the rust to report and understand.

I have read reports where they have blamed it on a lack of spirituality, on Christianity, on gun availability and all sorts of other things written by people attempting to use this event to push their personal beliefs. In the end this was the action of one individual who had his own reasons.

While I was at work on Friday, some of my employees brought a personnel problem to my attention. Lots of people were interviewed and everybody had their own take on what occurred. I was asked if I wanted to read the statements and declined to for the moment. As the reviewer I wanted to wait until all the information had been collected. I told my people to collect the rest of the information and not make any preliminary assumptions, just collect the information objectively and that we would review and attempt to make sense of it at a later time. I think the same applies here.

My prayers and thoughts go out to the family and friends of all involved, even the shooter. There are no winners when things like this happen. It is very likely that the shooter lost his mind, that is usually the case when people kill lots of people that they do not know without anything to gain from it. His actions will impact his family who had nothing to do with it and all the people who knew him. The people who knew him will agonize for years asking themselves if they should have known when they could not unless he had told them.