To the Editor:
Re “Gunman Kills 2 on Air and Posts Carnage Online” (front page, Aug. 27):
The deranged, savage killer who took the lives of two innocent television station employees was no doubt encouraged, aided and abetted by the ability to become infamous through the use of 21st-century technology.
He knew that he would secure a place in history by shooting his former co-workers while they were on the air, posting the murders on social media and providing a major television network with his “manifesto,” certain that it would be analyzed and widely disseminated so that society would focus on him and his trumped-up grievances.
Have we learned anything from the latest atrocity? Many of us have, but as we saw after the slaughter of 26 innocents in Newtown, Conn., any renewed desire to act to prevent future horrors will fade with time and through the persuasion of the National Rifle Association, which reacts hysterically to any proposal to regulate or restrict access to lethal weapons.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. So it shall be for us in the United States of America.
OREN SPIEGLER
Upper St. Clair, Pa.
Note from KBJ: This is mind-blowing. Of all the things to focus on in this criminal act, Oren Spiegler focuses on guns. The murderer could have driven a car into the reporter and cameraman; he could have stabbed them; he could have shot them with a crossbow; he could have detonated a bomb; and so on. Hoplophobia never sleeps.
