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Health & Fitness

The Bullets We Keep Taking

The shooter and his victims: how America is becoming used to the Familiar Unthinkable

 

When James E. Holmes opened fire in the Century Aurora 16 Theatre in Colorado last Thursday it became the latest unthinkable killing spree.  As headlines like this repeat themselves, the tragedies stop being unthinkable.  They've moved past unthinkable and past rare and have almost become the occasional.

We say we can't believe it happened but over and over, headlines have taught us to believe.  We've become so familiar with the fear of the man with the gun in the crowded place that we've learned how to zero in on the facts: the arsenal, the motive, the possibility of mental illness, the number dead.

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Shooting sprees don't just happen in America but they happen here more often.  The sudden Opt-Out, the person-become-animal, has slowly become part of our culture.  The repeated stunning of our senses seems to be part of our culture too.

None of us want to live in fear.  We want to be able to let our kids go to school, we want to feel safe in a mall, in a coffee shop, or at a Batman movie.  If we try not to think about the most recent shooting it's because we want to be able to feel safe.

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We may not be.  We try not to dwell on that but we know it's true.

As good as we've become at asking the standard questions after each killing spree, we've also gotten good at hearing all the reasons another one can't be prevented.

How is this phenomenon, this Terror-Stunning-Resuming cycle affecting our country?  When the Boogeyman is the Anyman, where can we run, who can you say you really know, what place is safe, at least for the moment?

And if we try to teach ourselves not to be afraid, are we at risk for feeling less of anything?

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