Tragedy

There are no words to describe how I feel. I am a movie patron and I worked at movie theaters for four years. I worked at them when Columbine occurred. Columbine happened not too long after I graduated high school. I read a comment that someone made on an article about the recent shootings in Colorado. This individual asked, how can this affect the nation? Why raise the flags half mast? I can respect where this person is coming from because violence exists anywhere. I will tell you how it does make an impact on the nation. People claim this is the biggest massacre in history. This is a fallacy because I am aware of massacres that happened in the hundreds in this country. I have experienced first hand how a tragedy impacts our country negatively. When Columbine happened, I was not in shock. I was not in shock because I was bullied by students and teachers. The only thing that shocks me is the footage. It saddens me to watch it. It saddened me more when I saw footage that the teens made. They were bullied in school. The nation was mortified with the shootings and used the scape goat fallacy and blamed it on the movies. Really? Think about this, Stephen King wrote a story about a student who brought a gun to school and I didn't hear anyone blaming him. He didn't even consider removing the book from the shelf until recent school violence. People were blaming violent movies and Marilyn Manson. Why? People did not realize that one of these teens were fascinated with violence and Hitler. People could not conceive that possibly just maybe that they were being bullied. They blamed the movies. This was my occupation at the time and this made my job difficult. Mr. President made a stipulation that just about everyone must be carded. If they were too young to watch an R rated movie, they could not attend a movie. Parents could not just simply buy tickets and drop off the children. Nope, minors were required to be under adult supervision at a movie theater. No exceptions. I can only imagine how things will be now that the violence happened at a movie theater instead of a school. I think it is heart wrenching because the theater is my favorite place to be. It overwhelms me to think what would happen if that occurred in Idaho. There was already a shooting at the Meridian theater. Some man sat in the parking lot with his daughter. He shot her and then he took his own life. Yes, this is a national tragedy because this is something that does impact other communities. My heart goes out to all those who were in the theater when the incident happened. My heart goes out to the people who work at the movie theater. My heart goes out to Colorado. I think that it is a national tragedy because movies have been an important part of our lives for a long time. Whether anyone realizes it or not. The movie theaters were a place to go to escape the poor economy. Movie theaters were the place to go for people to learn a little bit of English. Movie theaters were the place to go to learn how to read. Now, it is a place to escape and some individual destroyed that innocence. It's bad enough the people that work there for minimum wage and tolerate politics about the rating system. Now, they have to worry about people committing violent acts. It's not just Colorado or New York; it is the entire nation.