Crime Stopping, Time Hopping, Buck Stopping

JUST IN CASE anyone has forgotten, there was another mass murder at an american military installation recently, which seems strange, because you would think that at american military locations - forts, ships, offices, recruitment centers - of all places, somebody would have a gun, and would stop the mass murderer just as soon as he got started. Does the american military prefer to be unarmed on american soil? Is this to enhance public relations, and appear kinder, gentler? If so, it might wish to reconsider. One can never be too cautious, you know. Has american culture reached the point at which anytime, anywhere americans are gathered together in large numbers someone must be armed? If not, it soon might. American Secretary of Defense Chuck Hegal made a brilliant comment about the latest shooting: he said that there were red flags all through the life of the killer. Warning signs in his behavior that he was going, sooner or later, to do something really harmful. He never should've had the chance to kill people. He should've been stopped long ago, before it ever happened. The warning signs were there. This, according to our defense secretary. A more meaningless comment is difficult to imagine. In the future, the very near future, every one of us will do something harmful to ourselves, or someone else. Harmful, small or large. Let's just stop it, whatever it is, whatever its going to be, right now. Or maybe even hop into a time machine, go back to our earlier lives, and change everything that leads to harmful behavior. HIngsight is twenty twenty, mister secretary. Who knows where the next mass murderer in america - and there will be one - will come from. If only we could find out, and prevent it from happening. If the killer should have been made harmless long ago, then other people from the past are responsible for his horrible actions now. That takes the heat off the military hierarchy, all the way up the chain. Someone at the Truman Library, or the Smithsonian, might oughtat dust off Hary Truman's "the buck stops here" sign, and sneak it onto the desk of the secretary of defense.