Fox News on Sikh Temple Shooting
ABC/Yahoo on Sikh Temple Shooting
The shooting at the Sikh Temple was a vicious, senseless tragedy.
Now, does everybody agree on that?
Okay, so what does that fact that person who once served in the U.S. Army almost 15 years ago (before the years of combat) and either was kicked out with a dishonorable discharge or was kicked out with a general discharge (which is under less than honorable conditions) have to do with the shooting? Absolutely zip, zilch, nada, nothing. Yet for some reason, someone, somewhere decided to report the fact the ex-soldier (who obviously failed at that job) was involved in this tragedy.
Give me a break! Veterans face enough problems, especially those who have served in combat zones, without adding yet another stereotype link to violent psychopathic killer to the mix.
Add to the fact that the rock musician (yes, that was at least his more recent hobby according to the stories) did not serve in “combat”, was not “combat-arms” (he was a blinking missile tech and psyops warrior, for goodness sake, not the infantryman that one normally thinks of when one says “soldier”)
He apparently, according one of the stories, has links to some white supremacist groups. I don’t know, but at least in the military I was associated with it was fully integrated with substantial minority involvement (like most of the people I was associated with were of one minority group or another), so why link the army gratuitously to some jerk who after getting kicked out goes off on a jag?
Maybe I am being overly sensitive about this, but it really yanks my chain as an old journalist. I was taught to keep things relevant when writing a story and it seems to me that some editor should have asked the question of what made this idiot’s former military service relative to something he is doing a decade and a half later.
I also am watching for the gun-control advocates to crank up their machine. Well, all I have to say there is a 9mm pistol is not an assault weapon, period.
I also found it interesting that the police officer who killed the suspect shot him with a “squad rifle.” Five will get you nothing that was either an M-16 or an M-4 or a knockoff of the AR-15.
The other thing that struck me is that at the same time as this there was an incident in Detroit.
Shooting at Detroit Princess riverboat (Windsor Star report)
Shooting at Detroit Princess riverboat (Detroit Free Press report)
Seven people shot down, all wounded, one critically … and nary a peep on the “big boys”. Ah, heck, the shooter wasn’t a white supremacist ex-soldier at least.
And just a blip on the radar screen: 16 Egyptian police officers killed at a checkpoint in the Sinai. Again, ah heck, the killers weren’t some American crazy Christian white supremacist ex-soldiers at least.
Anyway, I pray for those who died. I pray for those who were wounded. May God grant them grace and peace.
People, we live in a violent world and it really doesn’t matter where you are: Violent people do violent things.
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