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A terrible event occurs, the country reacts, some of the response heartening, some of it dismaying, as in journalists trotting out a leftist bias that cannot resist defaming the Tea Party. But let's start with the good, with President Barack Obama visiting Aurora, Colo., to console families that lost loved ones in a shooting in a movie theater. Twelve were killed, dozens wounded and a nation saddened.
Standing before TV cameras, Obama found something inspiring to talk about: the way one young woman saved another by lying on the floor with her and holding fingers on a neck wound to stop the bleeding. There was more heroism at the scene. News accounts tell us of three young men who sacrificed themselves to protect girlfriends, showing how mountainous good can counteract this world's evil. Let's remember these names: Stephanie Davies, who survived, and Alex Teves, Matt McQuinn and Jon Blunk, who did not.
One name this column will not mention is that of the person police said was responsible for the killing. The governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, refuses to mention it, so does Obama, and I think that's right except for reporters of straight news. To the extent feasible, you want to prevent other crazy people out there from believing they can become famous through similar atrocities.
Hickenlooper also refused to join in the cry for more gun control. Even if the "creature" who sprayed a theater with bullets had no access to a firearm, he could have wreaked similar devastation with a bomb, the governor said on NBC's "Meet the Press." The suspect, we have learned, had loaded his apartment with explosive devices.
It's true, too, that there are more than 220 million guns in this country and that no law remotely within constitutional bounds -- or even disregarding the Second Amendment -- would likely reduce that number to the point where there would no way for a miscreant to acquire one. The efficacy of many if not all gun control laws is dubious, and it's more than dubious to try to keep them out of the hands of law-abiding citizens who have used them to stop crimes and save lives.
Detecting someone whose mental illness poses a threat to the rest of us is worth far more discussion, as some have suggested, but can be extremely difficult. For a stretch of time leading up to the killings, the man arrested in this case was engaged in some mostly hidden behavior that was a clue to what might be coming, but he had also been described as shy and "strangely quiet," adjectives fitting some who would never hurt anybody.
The worst journalism after the shooting happened when ABC News Reporter Brian Ross said on "Good Morning America" that there was someone with the killer's name who was listed on "the Colorado page on the Colorado Tea Party site." George Stephanopoulos, the show's co-host, told him he may have found something "significant" when he should have said, "Ross, the last thing in the world you want to do is broadcast information castigating a political movement when you have absolutely no idea whether this is the same man or not."
Once a horror has occurred, it has occurred. We cannot make time reverse itself. But our reactions help frame the future. It instills hope and can inspire more courage and more admirable behavior when we learn of good, even noble and heroic deeds amidst confusion and terror. It helps to consider what preventative steps might be taken to avoid similar horrors, though a rush to questionable cliches about guns avails little. What's absolutely unacceptable is to depict a horror as something likely to arise from a movement involving literally millions of perfectly decent Americans with perfectly reputable ideas. That sort of thing tears us apart.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
•07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
•07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
•07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
•07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
•07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
•07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
•06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
•06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
•06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
•06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
•06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
•06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
•06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
•06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
•05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
•05/23/12: Student loans fail students
•05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
•05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
•05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
•05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
•05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
•04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
•04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
•04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
•04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
•04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
•04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
•04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
•04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
•03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
•03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
•03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
•03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
•03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
•03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
•03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
•03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
•02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
•02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
•02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
•02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
•02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
•02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
•02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
•01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
•01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
•01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
•01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
•01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
•01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
•01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
•01/04/12: How America smothers itself
•12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
•12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
•12/21/11: A tale of two men
•12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
•12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
•12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
•12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
•12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
•11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
•11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
•11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
•11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
•11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
•11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
•11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
•11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
•10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
•10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
•10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
•10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
•09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
•09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
•09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
•09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
•09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
•09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
•09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
•09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
•08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
•08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
•08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
•08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
•08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
•08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
•08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
•08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
•08/03/11: The people who may save America
•07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
•07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
•07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
•07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
•07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
•07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
•07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
•07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
