You can't negotiate with an armed psychotic or for that matter a jihadist on a mission. My old hometown of London had some grief lately and my late dad was a Kindertransport refugee.

Go tell a few jokes and get pleasure from making some souls smile, it helps combat the negativity of grief. (o:

Amen, Ted.

Yes there are too many, you did a superb job on this one, and it's so meaningful. tigs=^..^=

---Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed---

Very wise words in the narrative of your touching post, Ted.

You're right by stating: "There are just too many of these happening in our era.". Wished that you were wrong however!

The North Dakota I grew up in and lived in since has been a relatively quiet and peaceful place for a good many years (I'm 63 now). But over the past 5 years the Bakken oil field in the western third of our state has brought a large influx of people, here to make as much money as possible, while exhibiting little or no concern for our land or its citizens. Right at the beginning of the Bakken craze, two drifters coming through Wyoming and Montana to work here, got high on meth and grabbed a woman teacher, out for a jog. It was an impulse crime and they murdered her within minutes of taking her, burying her in a shallow grave and depriving her family of closure for quite some time. This past year, hired racist goons arrived south of our town to protest a previously approved pipeline (within the same easement of a previous pipeline), declaring themselves "saviors of the water." The result of their stay here cost the state over $11 million, they used the internet to flood the country with lies that netted them millions of dollars in donations from people all over the world who were gullible enough to believe them, they destroyed private and public property, conducted drive-bys in our town of 20,000, disrupted as much of our lives as they could, and polluted the land they squatted on and even the river they claimed to be protecting. Today I see singles, couples, and groups of people on our interstate off-ramps, holding cardboard signs printed with pleas for help from our tender-hearted citizens. The thing is, I see these same people for months on end and when a car comes up the ramp toward them, they toss away their cigarette and tuck their ear buds under the collars of their $200+ winter coats. When populations and the cost of living climbs it becomes more difficult for people to live, so many take the easy way, even if it involves criminal activity. Too often racism is a factor, used to express their frustration, and drug use only makes it worse. The way the economy is heading and the rise in population, I fear more of these outbreaks of anger and violence will happen, and if we're beginning to see it here in North Dakota, with a population just under 684,000, the larger cities are in for some hard times.

-Nik