A Dark Night at the Dark Knight

I don't know about you, but I've been shaken by the horrific events that took place in Colorado this weekend. To the detriment of us as a society, the "lone gunman" story has become increasingly more commonplace, and now it has incredulously spread to the one true sanctuary of genuine escape in our daily lives. No, not the toilet. The movies.

The irony of the execution is staggering. The crazed shooter opened fire just at the moment that the film showed a blazingly violent gun fight on an airplane. As audiences are now accustomed to 3-D and crystal clear digital Dolby sound, you can only imagine how long it must have taken for the viewers to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

When any terrifying event of this nature occurs, several groups rear their heads in an attempt to restore order.

The media will play their usual game called "Let's find a Motive." But we can all cut to the chase on this. There isn't any. In this world, insanity is a courtroom defense, but not a motive. So the exhaustive search to find some semblance of logic will keep us all inside the mouse trap.

Next, the 2nd amendment pundits will come out of the woodwork, and begin their call for new gun laws. Although a very respectable sentiment, we already know that the NRA has been holding a gun to politicians' heads for decades, so don't expect everyone to switch to BB guns any time soon.

After this, the psychiatrists will emerge, all espousing the fact that if the shooter was their patient, they would have probably seen the signs long before the ammunition was even purchased. It's apparent that a grand total of none of them could have prevented this, but it does make you wonder if they just wait for these assassinations to begin their recruitment campaigns for new clients.

The final group to weigh in, will be law enforcement. I only have the utmost respect for the men and women who choose this line of work to protect us against the harm that lurks in the shadows in every town in the country. But their first chess move is typically misdirected. A perfect example was NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's decision to place cops at every Batman theater in NYC. It's a great sentiment, I know, but do we really think anyone would try this in Manhattan? The NYPD has built a reputation that most people really don,t want to roll the dice with.

Which brings up another critical point. Over the last decade, these shootings continue to propagate outside the major cities. Just look at most of them post-Columbine. We had a colossal disaster at Virginia Tech. Then there was the military shooter in Fort Hood Texas. Now someone has put Aurora, Co. on the map. Is there a certain sophistication in the major cities in this country where individuals understand that violent movies and video games are mere entertainment and not a How-To guide on how to reek havoc on society? I don't think we'll ever know, but something wicked this way comes in Small Town USA.

So where do we go from here? When this story's flame is extinguished, we'll go back to our lives where business will most likely be as usual. And, we'll allow our experts to do their jobs. The media will continue to debate and inform. Politicians will engage and then deflect any changes to the gun laws. Psychiatrists will try to keep the crazies off the streets through talk therapy, and the cops will do everything short of encroaching on your civil liberties to make sure the public remains as safe as possible.

And despite this bastion created by several key members of our community, in the end, there's only one truth we all know too well.

Sometimes, we're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.