Sadly I don't need a lot of time to reflect on how this is going to play out in our media. See, sadly, stuff like this has happened far to often in recent years, and it always seems to play out the same way.
At first the sheer shock and horror of what happened.
About 12 hours after it happened, the first two stages are already on full display. Those on the far right saying if somebody in the audience had a gun, maybe ths wouldn't have happened. Somebody on the other side saying we need more gun laws.
Heck somebody on the Religious right will most likely say it happened because of our "godless" society and it isn't a fluke the individual choose the Batman movie as his target.
What will be next is most painful for me and what I want to focus on here.
In almost all these cases in an Internet society, we'll find a lot of writings by the suspect, James Holmes. Terrible writings and rants on social media sites and Internet forums. Writing that should have raised a lot of red flags. We'll find friends, family members, and teachers worried about him. Most likely they tried to get him help. But for any number of reasons he fell through the crack of our health and mental care system.
Now I am NOT remotely trying to justify anything this individual did. I can't nor won't do that.
But mark my words those around this individual knew he was troubled. Knew he was a risk. And try as they might to get him help, they couldn't. Now I only worked in the mental health field for a short period of time, but it was clear there were many folks that needed help, getting it often wasn't easy.
Just like we hear countless horror stories here of folks that need basic health care and can't get it, those with mental health issues are out there as well. They often just don't talk about it a much cause they don't want to be called "unstable," "insane," or "crazy."
I mean lets face it, if you have to take some pills cause you have high blood pressure nobody thinks anything of it. You just have a medical condition. But if you have to take some pills because you are bipolar, well that carries a huge stigma in our soceity.
So we have 12 more individuals death. Dozens hurt. Countless others damaged in ways I can't comprehend. I really wish this time, after so many similar cases, we'd actually talk about the state of mental health services in this nation. Please, please, please.