...it seems we, as a people, are ready to take more notice of the gun violence that most of us did not see or perhaps want to see. I hope it keeps up so we continue to struggle our way to a useful conversation and results.

among the troops day after day...

instead of wasting time and money prosecuting non-violent drug offenders.

Hmmmmm.

as well as an innocent bystander who tried to help him.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this officer, the man who came to help him (both killed by gunfire), and their families on this Christmas Eve. I have read that the officer had a wife and two children at home. The good samaritan's wife was inside the business where this incident occurred and witnessed everything. Christmas will never be the same for these families.

My SIL & BIL are here visiting my husband's parents for Christmas, and we were all sitting around the dinner table after eating, and this came up. My far right-wing MIL said some nimwit thing about it's not the gun that is the problem, it's the person holding the gun, and that if he had a knife it still could have harmed them. Both my SIL and BIL (democrats both) and I almost shouted her down saying that the knife wounds might have been survivable, and there are far too many guns on the streets. She shut up pretty quickly, as she was very out-numbered.

This is sad.

I'm guessing it's some sort of sick twisted copycat crime. I'm sure more will come.

what we've been seeing over the last few days is the copycat phenomenon. It happens, especially after a major incident like the Newtown Massacre. Inevitably, it dwindles as the phenomenon loses steam with the passage of time.

Sadly there's a lot of folks, who in more ordinary circumstances, would've quietly retreated to the bedroom and put a bullet through their head.....now however, the "trendy" thing to do is to take a few people with you. And the wall-to-wall media coverage likely doesn't help matters. All the sad, lonely and slightly deranged people out there start thinking, "Ah ha! Everyone's gonna know me now!" and it all goes downhill from there.

Color me cynical, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's one more major massacre in the not-too-distant future. And then the copycat phenomenon will have burned itself out. In a way, it's almost like the titular character from "It", Pennywise the Dancing Clown (a.k.a. Bob Gray). It comes to life every so often, does its thing, and then goes back to sleep. People forget until it starts over again. Personally, I've always read "It" as something of an allegory regarding outbursts of mass violence or mass hysteria. Granted, Mr. King is going for an otherworldly explanation of the phenomenon, but I've always read the book as more allegorical.

But who knows? Maybe, somewhere down there, in some forgotten part of a drainage system, there is some slumbering entity that feeds off hatred, paranoia, fear and death.

Merry Christmas, to you and all DU'ers.

LOL. Indeed, they are the sewer-dwellers. The real-life incarnations of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and frankly, scarier.