Guest Essay: Open Season
Dear Friends,
I can't help but think of these parallels between the sniper killings these past few weeks that perhaps now have come to an end for people, and the sniper killings of the next several weeks just gearing up for the animals:
- Shooting individuals totally at random, in their everyday places and doing their everyday activities.
- Having no regard for victims' gender, age, families, circumstances, or their individual lives.
- Planning, stalking, hiding, and ambushing victims when they least expect it.
- Using high-powered rifles that are meant to kill the individual and devastate the body with one shot.
- Killing for the thrill of it, for fun, and as a show of power and control.
- Killing individuals from long distances so there can be no chance for the victim to be aware of the shooter.
- Killing with a buddy.
- Killing children, killing mothers, killing fathers.
- Killing for no reason, or killing for any reason that the killers think justifies it.
- Having no remorse for the victims, and looking forward with excitement to the next kill.
Now we know how the deer feel.
In a few short weeks, the terror of our last three weeks will be theirs, as it is every year, as swarms of snipers enter their world and, as only two did in ours, wreak havoc in their lives, their families, and their communities. How do we get the animal killers to understand the tragedy and the irony, to feel the connection and the compassion? A sniper is a sniper, terror is terror, killing is killing.
It's really that simple.
Marge
New York
October 2002
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