A few thoughts about the shootings in Oregon before I slide into a weekend of “weekend warrioring” involving the back and side lawns…

…because no matter what the subject matter is, it’s always about him. Erick Erickson at Red State is absolutely right in calling Barack Obama a jackass of the highest magnitude.

Tragedies like what happened in Oregon yesterday makes us as a nation die just a little bit spiritually, doesn’t it? But the sad fact is we’ve cheapened life to the level of convenience. How many lives were terminated at Planned Parenthood sites yesterday? More than a dozen, I’d bet. It’s funny how liberals want to take away people’s guns but will defend to the death (no pun intended) resisting any kind of limitation on when and how women can terminate pregnancies. Life is life, death is death, no matter which way you slice it.

Illinois is a bastion of liberalism with some of the toughest gun laws in the nation; so how’s that working out in Chicago, where more people have been killed over the past two weekends than were killed in yesterday’s massacre?

You can’t rationalize the actions of someone who is either mentally imbalanced or irrationally bent on making a name for themselves.

You know what I would have liked President Jackass to mention yesterday? The importance of being aware of those around you and who you interact with on social media, and report any kind of activity that raises your suspicions to the authorities. Just as with just about any other mass murderer’s actions in the past, this guy will have been shown to have left plenty of clues and a trail of suspicious behavior behind.

Isn’t it ironic and tragic that in this technologically-advanced age we live in where there are seemingly endless ways to connect with people that there are those who feel so alone and isolated they lash out in incredibly violent ways?

It’s easy to say there are no easy answers here, but here’s one that I thought of last night while working out at the gym: there must be a lot of veterans of all ages out there with exquisite training in firearms and intervention techniques in need of work, both part-time and full-time. Why not hire them as security guards at schools and colleges, where this kind of thing seems most rampant? After all, these kinds of institutions seem to attract unbalanced individuals who, while crazy, also know these places are oftentimes gun-free zones. Hire a vet, decrease the odds that your school will be next. Seems like a win-win to me.