One year ago a 17 year old student walked into the high school cafeteia in Chardon Oho and opened fire. When he was done, three students were dead, three more were wounded, one still now confined to a wheel chair.
Yesterday, the shooter was brought to court for sentencing after pleading guilty. As he arrived in the courtroom he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a t-shirt with the word KILLER scrawled in black marker. He sat and heard the pained statements of the families of his victims. The questions. Why?
In his final statement he turned to the survivors, and said "The hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. F--- all of you." He then beligerantly gave them the finger with a very deliberate smirk on his face.
It's almost as outrageous as you can get.
The powerful thing is this column by Connie Schultz. I'll quote a bit and link the rest, but you should read it all, its worth it:
On Tuesday, a year after he murdered three Chardon High School students and injured three others, 18-year-old T.J. Lane walked into his sentencing hearing and made it virtually impossible for most of us to summon even a shred of sympathy for his condemned soul.
But summon we must. If we are good people — and most of us want to believe we are — we are called to dig deeper for compassion that eludes us, lest our own souls wither.
Bear with me, please. I've worked hard in the past 24 hours to find this patch of my heart. It's a tenuous grasp, and I'm trying to hold on tight.
.........
Like so many here in Ohio, I wanted Lane to be a broken boy, sobbing over the damage he could not undo. At the very least, I wanted him to be the silent, dazed defendant we'd seen before. Instead, he did everything he could to incite our hate.
Mission accomplished. After Lane was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Facebook and Twitter erupted with vile scenarios of what some hope lies ahead for the unrepentant murderer. Nothing like the Internet to remind us that absent self-vigilance, we can become the monsters we claim to condemn.
I hear the reprimand and guiltily agree: This isn't about us bystanders, and it surely isn't about me. The children who died are irreplaceable; their families are inconsolable. The surviving victims and family members are the only ones who justly wrestle with how to forgive.
Still, there is work for all of us to do. Our response to Lane's monstrous behavior determines our future, too. We must always consider hate's consequence on our own hearts.
Please go read the rest here:
http://www.creators.com/...
One last comment. I too oppose the death peanalty for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is we too often get it wrong.
But for this man (and he is a man) what I would not oppose is perpetual solitary confinement until he can convincingly explain why he deserves anything else. He should never see the light of day outside a prison wall again.
And, to Wayne LaPierre, please explain all this. I'm doubting that you can.