Another Theater Shooting But With Only One Death

29 year old Vincente David Montano.

paranoid schizophrenia

29 year old Vincente David Montano

I was wiping my tears from the tragedy of the Emmanuel 9 including a few that I find myself shedding for the families that breed these menaces to our society when I heard that arraigning judge in South Carolina ask for sympathy and prayers for all of the families in this tragedy, including Roof's. I came eerily close to blogging the same sentiment of that insensitive judge who needed to understand that it was simply too soon, but I got saved by the outrage he had to endure all by himself.

While living with the pain of losing a loved one from a horrific murder is difficult, I often imagine to myself what it must be like to be the parents of the Columbine killers, Klebold and Harris, or Cho, the Virginia Tech terrorist.  These young men died along with those they killed leaving all of the questions of why to be cast at the people we expect to have those answers.

Their parents.

As a parent, I imagine myself in that position so that I might never find myself in that position, but what can a parent really do in the end.  If I think my young adult child needs to get some therapy for the same reason that we all need a little therapy- our parents- they are likely to blame me for the need and potentially move further from help because of my suggestion.  On both counts they would be correct because most of our adult problems stem from childhood issues that "good parents" are supposed to be able to curtail and us bad parents should be ashamed for even pointing out.

With the massive energy that I placed into the hopes and future of my children, I also invested a fair amount of time in the lives of other peoples children, and still do. At some point in the process of parenting I came to recognize that all children were limited by the weak links in their midst, so for both altruistic and selfish reasons, I work on the links too.  Will that be a catalyst for anger and resentment in my adult children that grows into displaced reactions when they are feeling unstable?  I remain prayerful for the best outcomes that a parent can dream of with each of my offspring, but I am also more and more cognizant of the immense necessity for prayer and the utter futility in hoping to track or navigate the lives of adult people.  Good or bad, most of our work really is completed by age 5 exactly like they say.

If my kids became unstable and wished to hurt themselves or (God forbid)others, I am hopeful that I would see the signs in time enough to do something about it.  On that issue I am glad that my kids are black women who lead the list of least likely to do domestic terrorism, yet I don't move to the seat of judgement when I think about the parents of  the kind of young adults who fit the likely profile for this kind of crime.

 In fact, my heart truly goes out to them all.  Fortunately, the  family of the most recent domestic theater terrorist only have to mourn the loss of their own family member and not the added guilt of the others who often get killed as well during these incidents.  Fortunately for this family, we can actually find sympathy or empathy right away for them instead of sticking a thermometer into public opinion to find that right moment to finally go there.

Of course, the low head count in this tragedy will make it even less of a story than the others are becoming since domestic terror is now a normal part of our life expectancy formulas, kind of like catching a virus that you don't take seriously and dying as a result.  Actually, domestic terror is exactly that virus that we don't take seriously until it kills us or someone dear to us.  Even then we tend to spend most of our energy on mourning the victims instead of delecately uncovering the root of the disease and offering support, understanding and maybe an antibiotic if you will. These families are victims of the crime along with the rest of humanity, but they are also sources for answers that need more love and tender interrogation than they ever tend to get.


The Gun Was Fake?!

With all of the accidental killing of black men, I can only
use this gun in my back yard...during the day time.  Did
they need to make it look so real?

Montano pursued his terror with a machete knife, pepper spray and an airsoft pellet pistol.
 Maybe he was one of the disturbed individuals who wasn't raised to be comfortable around guns and only got the nerve to buy a fake one (kind of like me) and we can actually credit these parents for his not having a real gun.  I've gotten really good at using my fake gun, unfortunately for the neighborhood squirrels, but I often wonder why it had to be so real looking for it to work well.  As a black man, I often think about painting the darn thing orange for my own safety, while I also wonder if we are so gun crazed that we even want our fake guns to appear real and our crazed folks to have the same access to real guns as the rest of us?

Lots of questions, so few answers. God bless the victims that were injured and terrorized and to the family of Montano.  At least this time we get to actually think about them and can avoid the  important conversation of reasonable gun restrictions for people who are unstable. That conversation never goes anywhere anyway.