{"id":5564,"date":"2015-12-03T06:23:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T11:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=5564"},"modified":"2015-12-03T06:36:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T11:36:32","slug":"those","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=5564","title":{"rendered":"“those”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo-1439761414027-4f4ebeeda3a3\"<\/a>Another week. Another shooting.<\/p>\n

And so I sit at my laptop, soberly scrapping the thoughts originally penned for today\u2019s post, knowing another topic takes greater priority, as our heads and hearts are focused elsewhere.<\/p>\n

But my heart hurts when focusing there. Horrific, senseless tragedies hurt.<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, wait\u2026 I hear \u201cthose\u201d already. \u201cThose\u201d are the \u201cI\u2019m-mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore\u201d<\/em> crowd\u2026 I get it. I don\u2019t want to take it any more either.<\/p>\n

In all sincerity, it\u2019s challenging to respond to part of this crowd \u2014 not because they aren\u2019t well-intentioned \u2014 I believe they are; like the rest of us, they want the violence to stop. Their \u201cloudness\u201d is in obvious response to how much these senseless tragedies hurt. But when a person is \u201cmad-as-hell\u201d about gun violence yet calm and cool regarding mass beheadings and Islamic terrorism, I find the messaging inconsistent and thus hard to adhere or respectfully respond to.<\/p>\n

There are another set of \u201cthose\u201d\u2026 \u201cthose\u201d who get immediately, completely all riled up over San Bernardino, but are still preaching patience in regard to any judgment of the shooter at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. Both were inspired by some kind of evil. We can\u2019t justify rushing to judgment in one but reserving it in the other; that\u2019s inconsistent. Again, it\u2019s hard to listen well to inconsistent proclamations.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing\u2026<\/p>\n

The most talked about tragedies across the country today are San Bernardino, Planned Parenthood, and Paris \u2014 each an instance in which gunmen inspired by evil \u2014 or something obviously wrong within them \u2014 intentionally killed innocent others. What they each did is awful. The scary part is that these three events sadly only cover the most recent three weeks. The killing will happen again. The killing may be closer to you and me.<\/p>\n

And yet\u2026 most of us are inconsistent in one or more of the following:<\/p>\n