We just love our violence -- so how surprising is it that violence for fun begets the real thing? Here's what a witness told CNN affiliate KUSA:
"We were watching a scene of the movie -- it was a shootout scene, there were guns firing," he said. "Then loud bangs came from the right of the theater. Smoke took over the entire theater, and it was really thick and no one could really see anything. Me and my sister were sitting there wondering what was going on. Five people were limping, wounded, slightly bloody."
Understandably, the violence that pervades our lives just makes us more angry and more dangerous to each other. We are, in short, a sick society on many levels--and we need to do something about it.
That's a conversation we could be having. But our major media and our elected leaders would have to get it started.
In the meantime, we can talk among ourselves, in a civilized way, about how to become a more peaceable people. Here are a couple of openers:
***An interesting study in which inexperienced players of violent video games showed more of a need to cleanse themselves afterwards than the veteran gamers. What does this tell us about acclimatization to violence?
***More information on possible solutions can be found at sites such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
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