Earlier today, a man shot up a crowded movie theater, killing a lot of people and injuring even more. Nearly everything said about this situation irritates me. I think this is because I have ideas and emotions about the shootings that are in conflict with each other, so everything I read or see ignores some aspect of my reactions.
The people who were there should be left alone. Either they have a lot to deal with, in which case pestering them for information and glamorizing their situations does not help, or they are already dealing with it, in which case sonorous concern about their well-being is likely to undermine their coping.
The people who were there should be honored. The deceased deserve to have their stories told; the wounded deserve our support; everyone, including families and friends of the people there, deserves our condolences and affection.
The shooter is an asshole. No matter what has happened to him, what drugs he was on, what disappointments he has suffered, he had no right to shoot those people. Any remark that says anything other than, “He is an asshole,” leaves me angry. Even naming him suggests he was less of an asshole, that he has some sort of backstory that contextualizes his regard for other people as only enemies, admirers, cowards, and victims. I’m a fanatic about free speech, but at moments like this, I wouldn’t mind a law that made it a crime to report his name or anything about him.
The shooter is one of us. No matter what he did, we have to acknowledge that horrifying fact. That a human is capable of this behavior, and that I am a human, is disgusting and humbling, but I can’t pretend that it is otherwise. We have to learn about him to learn about us.
I need to make sense of tragedy. I want details of the event and people involved so I can create a symbolic narrative that fits my values and my view of the world.
I want to be entertained. My son, Max, noticed while we watched the replays of 9/11 that the planes flying into the buildings had gone from horrible to kind of cool. This sense of spectatorship today makes me disgusted by my own interest.
So whatever is said about today’s shooting is bound to piss me off. I don’t like how it paints the victims, the shooter, the public, the journalists, or me.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
I”m pissed that it keeps happening again and again and again and we don’t do anything about automatic weapons so that maybe next time there will be only two or three dead or wounded before somebody can realize what is happening and tackle the asshole. Maybe the assholes wouldn’t even think it was so much fun without an automatic weapon and would just stay home with their video games.
I’m pissed that people cry out “where was God?!?” when the real question is “where were you?!?” Then, I get pissed that we’re even asking that question, when we should be asking, “what did I learn from this?” which leads to the question, “what will my role be in preventing this from happening again.” Then, I get pissed that I’ve wasted 2.5 minutes on that type of energy and realize that, due to this revelation, I actually agree with what you’ve posted. It is my choice to stop giving “that asshole” any more power. I can pray. I can heal my own demons in the hope of inspiring others to follow, because (as you said) the shooter is one of us. I can love. That is the lesson.
By the by, thank you for the perspective as well as the soap-box forum.