Colorado Rampage Could Scare Some Into Solitude

Like many around the nation this morning, I was glued to the television as events in Aurora, Colorado unfolded surrounding the mass shooting at a movie theater that, at this writing, has left 12 dead and another 38 injured. I'm angry...and I'm concerned.

Hundreds gathered at the Century 16 Theater for a midnight showing of the likely summer blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. A man decked out in riot gear--bullet-proof vest, gas mask--walked in through an exit door and started shooting. He has since been apprehended; he was nabbed in the parking lot soon after the incident.

We've learned that his apartment building is booby-trapped. He is in custody. But who IS this lunatic?

What was his motivation? Is there a connection to the film? The murderer, after all, was dressed like one of the film's villains, Bane. And how in the world can anyone ever know when this sort of thing is about to happen?

Like all terrorist attacks--and that's what I call it--it is completely random, the most unpredictable way that innocent people die. And that leads me to think that there are those who will take this horrific tragedy as a cue to stock up enough food and indoor entertainment so that they will not have to leave their homes.

Clearly, people have to work, but other than that, the terror that this will instill in some could be so pervasive that they will all but totally remove themselves from society. I am not among those who would consider such a lifestyle, but there will be those who do.

Sadly, this country has seen its fair share of mass murder. And the biggest such event of them all--the 9/11 terrorist attacks--sort of made us separate them into categories. But I don't. This man in Colorado committed a terrorist attack.

He terrorized a movie theater, a community, and--to a certain extent--an entire nation. And, as far as I'm concerned, he can't be punished harshly enough.

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