Op-ed by Scott Terry

As I opened the internet to look up information for someone, I caught a glimpse of the story about a shooting at a community college in Oregon. After taking care of business, I went back to the internet to read the story.

Now I'm mad, I'm upset, I'm sad, and I'm a bit bewildered. I feel bad for the families of the victims, and even the family of the shooter.

By now, I'm certain there have been more calls by politicians to take away access to purchasing guns. Hey, I admit it. I'm one of those wackos that believe that guns don't kill people - bad people kill people. If the killer didn't have a pistol or rifle... they may have used a knife, an axe, a bomb, or gasoline to carry out their heinous act. But that's an entirely different article.

What has happened in the past couple of decades that has changed people's minds about the sanctity of life? What took place in our society that allows a 20-year-old male to even think about committing mass murder? Maybe it's always been this way, but it just seems worse than ever due to instant news and the availability of much wider news coverage. I don't know, but it seems these types of tragedies happen much more often or are attempted more often than ever before.

There's no doubt that we have become a much more tolerant society. We've basically done away with, what some might call, extreme forms of punishment. Folks my age will tell stories of how if you acted up in school you were punished for your actions. In the seventh grade, Mr. J.E. Mitcham had a solid piece of hickory with holes bored in it. Ouch! But it only took one time to know you didn't want to cross Mr. Mitcham again. And though Mr. Mitcham is no longer alive, I not only respect him for the lessons he taught in class, but the life lessons I learned from the wrong end of that stick of hickory.

My parents didn't abuse me, but they definitely got the point across about the things that are right and the things that are wrong. I knew which freshly cut switches were going to hurt and which ones didn't sting as bad. Though I am far from perfect, I believe I developed a pretty good moral compass... with the help of my parents and the teachers I had in school. I knew there would be serious consequences for bad actions.

After reading about killings, such as this mass murder, it seems that there are always people who want to jump to the conclusion that there was mental instability or a recent circumstance made the murderer lose his perception of reality. Well, and don't expect an apology for my next opinion... the guy is a murderer and if he had not died, he should have been treated as a murderer. By the last report I read, thirteen people were dead and another 20 were wounded. Don't sugar-coat it by saying it was an unfortunate incident, call it by its rightful name... it was an act of mass murder. It doesn't matter if it was planned or simply a random, spur-of-the-moment act... it was murder.

But I still don't understand... why? Why people have grown so callous that killing another human being for no apparent reason is okay. Why people young or old are not terrified of the consequences when they perpetrate such a heinous crime. Why have they lost their respect for life. Why?