Friday, July 20, 2012

Midnight Movie Theater Shooting

I'm shaken to learn of the shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, leaving twelve dead and many more injured.

On one level, it's a senseless attack no one could have foreseen, but it also gets to me as someone who's attended midnight screenings. I never once thought something like this could happen, and for that sense of safety I thank all police and security people.

When people go to movies, they are looking to escape reality for a couple of hours. They are ready to buy into what happens on the screen and rest assured that any violence that occurs will only be on the screen. For someone to open fire on a place of assumed safe imagination is especially evil.

I take small comfort that the gunman was arrested shortly after the shooting and will face justice, unlike so many previous gunmen who killed themselves before they could be caught.

I'll continue to attend midnight screenings whenever I get the chance and am in the wacky mood. It's not especially brave. It's just that the alternative is to fear everything that might happen. And that isn't living.

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