First comment

Omaha Nebraska.

I live in New York about one and a half miles from ground zero. Sure terrorism is scary. No one wants to be on a hijacked jet and no one wants to get hit by a plane. But let's face it, most of us go into crowded stores and shopping malls all the time, and there are lots of depressed young people (and even older people) crying out for attention from a world in which they feel totally passed over. What really frightens me is not some foreign person with a bomb strapped to his/her chest or getting killed while sitting at my desk. What really frightens me is that an off-kilter individual can get an assault weapon and charge into a place that I might go without a second thought. Why can we buy assault weapons in this country? Why is mental illness ignored and treated differently from physical illness? Why are young people who tend to be disaffected anyway treated like throwaways? Why oh why are we taking vicious swipes men and women who enter this country under cover of darkness in order to support themselves and their families? Why is foreign terrorism such a bogeyman while domestic terrorism driven by psychosis and/or anger is ignored? We seem to be so terrorized by teenagers and twenty-somethings who live half a world away and have no means to travel. Shouldn't we be looking at our domestic problems? Can we really afford to ignore the hundreds of thousands of people, men and women, boys and girls, who reside just off Main Street who can buy weapons, get in the car and go to the mall and take out Christmas shoppers?

Yes, foreign terrorism poses a threat, but we proceed at our own peril if we continue to look the other way when it comes to disturbed people right here at home who have the desire and the wherewithal to blow people away because guns are handy and medical treatment is not.