Tragedy in Crandon

By now I'm sure you've all heard the news.

I'll give a brief recap and a couple of photographs from AP:

A young, 20 year old Forest County Deputy Sheriff and Part time City of Crandon Police officer went into the home of his ex-girlfriend near downtown Crandon and killed her and five other people in the home. Here's a link to the updated story.
In Wisconsin, we're not accustomed to such stories. They're usually reserved for big cities, or, if they're in a rural area, we always think of them as being very distant from us. This tragedy hits home because that's not who we are in Wisconsin. We're not known to be violent, unstable persons who "go off" at the drop of a hat.

No.

That's not us.

Not by a longshot.

Another blogger friend of mine commented on another tragic story the other day, and, after reviewing the facts of the case, determined that nobody did anything illegal; nobody did anything to provoke the tragedy except the person who committed it. I think that's the case here. There is no obvious platform to blame a "gun culture"...after all the perpetrator was a Deputy Sheriff for Forest County. He was authorized to carry a gun.

I read the first Associated Press Article on this story this morning and already they were playing the "Neighbors ask : How did shooter get through the system?" card early this morning. In my opinion, that's a stupid question.

Why is it a stupid question?

Because there probably wasn't (and in many cases there never is) any sign of this kind of emotional instability before. It was just one of those instances where somebody "snapped". As much as we'd like to point to some sign; point to some incident that "should have" tipped us off to potential instability, it's probably fruitless...or worse, anything said in retrospect is like trying to conjure up an image in tea-leaves.

Sometimes these things happen.

We don't know why.

I think this police officer feels theway most of us do.

And maybe it's better to just leave it that way.