Here we go again. Last time it was a packed movie theatre. This time it was a suburban mall jammed with Christmas shoppers.
And in both instances, one man with a gun.
Police in Oregon now say a man dressed in camouflage and a mask and possibly wearing body armor strode into the Clackamas Town Center and opened fire. It’s several miles from downtown Portland.
The reverberations are being felt in every part of this country today. That’s because we once again will be trying to get our hands around what could possibly drive someone to that kind of action.
And, probably more importantly, it again shatters a routine activity that all of us do every day.
We are approaching the peak of the holiday shopping season. The malls are packed. You don’t expect that routine activity to be interrupted by gunfire.
Now you’re not so sure.
The gunman killed two people and wounded another, before taking his own life.
Witnesses say he calmly entered the mall, announced “I am the shooter,” and opened fire.
I don’t know what you can do to stop a deranged gunman intent on shooting up a public place.
In the next few days we likely will learn much about the gunman, the weapon he used, how he got it, if it was legal. And of course we will have the requisite arguments about the need for more stringent gun control. I doubt that would have stopped this guy.
We will use all that information as a salve for our shattered psyches.
We keep telling ourselves it couldn’t happen here.
Of course, here in Delaware County, we know that isn’t the case. We already lived through a similar rampage at Springfield Mall in 1985.
Then, it was a rarity.
Today it’s becoming all too routine.
And maybe that’s the really scary part.
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