I consider myself to be a pretty calm and collected kinda guy, but when I sat down in my office this past Monday morning and fired up my laptop, I wanted to punch my screen and let the expletives fly when I came across the heartbreaking news that was pouring in over the web.
A mass shooting during an outdoor country music concert on the Las Vegas Strip.聽 58 people killed.聽 Over 500 hurt and injured.
By Monday afternoon, the death toll had claimed one more.聽 For all we know, it could be 60 or more by the time this column is published and being read by all of you.
I honestly could鈥檝e screamed when I saw those headlines, if not for the lump that had formed in my throat.聽 Almost five dozen lives just wiped off the face of the earth by a madman with a gun, doling out fatal punishment from a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel in what is now officially the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
But wait, there鈥檚 more!聽 Just in case you thought the chaos south of the border wasn鈥檛 enough, there was an attack in Edmonton on Saturday outside of a CFL game that many are calling an act of terrorism, as a Chevy Malibu plowed into a crowd-control barricade, hitting an RCMP officer.聽 The suspect then proceeded to get out of the vehicle, stab the officer repeatedly, and took off on foot.聽 Soon, officers were pursuing a U-Haul truck being driven by the assailant, who proceeded to hit four pedestrians.聽 After the truck was upended, the driver was taken in and eventually charged with five counts of attempted murder, four counts of criminal flight causing bodily harm, dangerous driving and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
At this time, he had not been charged with any terrorism-related offences, but the investigation is still early, according to Edmonton RCMP.
If you鈥檙e wondering why I seem to go out of my way to not provide the names of either man in the Las Vegas and Edmonton attacks, it鈥檚 because I refuse to give them what they want.聽 My fellow media contemporaries may play into the twisted mind games of these individuals because so often, what they really want is to be famous, or rather 鈥榠nfamous鈥� in these cases.聽 They want their names in the papers and on the 6:00 news and they want to go down in history with their sick contributions to the decay of society.
So if you want to know their names, go hit up CNN.聽 You won鈥檛 read them here.
What is it that manages to turn seemingly-normal men and women into hate-filled and psychotic killing machines?聽 Dark or abusive upbringings?聽 Shockingly, that鈥檚 typically not the case.聽 A basic Google search into the pasts of infamous killers such as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy or Canada鈥檚 own Paul Bernardo shows that darkness can still claim someone鈥檚 mind despite a normal bright background of a solid, middle-class upbringing.
I don鈥檛 know how people come to be killers, and perhaps that鈥檚 what is scariest of all; that there aren鈥檛 any concrete answers.聽 At any time, something in one鈥檚 mind is capable of just snapping.
What I do know is that we need to become better as a human race because we are failing miserably in so many ways.聽 We fight and argue over the stupidest and the most inane things these days, and far too much of it makes me shake my head; so much so that I wish I had the funds to go buy a cabin somewhere and just completely check out of everyday society.
A disturbed man points a gun at a crowd of thousands and begins picking them off to claim the first-place trophy for the number of lives erased, and suddenly things like dissecting every little move Trump or Trudeau makes, or the controversy over highly-paid athletes making a 鈥渟tatement鈥� during the national anthem just seem small in comparison.
There is a lot of good in this world; we see examples of it every day.聽 In fact, people were lined up in Las Vegas around the block early Monday morning to give blood for those who needed it in the aftermath of the concert shooting.
It鈥檚 just sad that the bad seems to have a dark advantage in outweighing the good.聽 Even sadder is the realization that we were all lied to as kids.
Monsters are in fact real; they just happen to walk on two legs.
For this week, that鈥檚 been the Ruttle Report.
