Thread: Killing of Australian baseball player

This is a pretty good read

The 22-year-old college baseball star was shot in the back as he jogged along a road in the Oklahoma city of Duncan on Friday.

One of three teenagers arrested over the shooting reportedly laughed and danced during as he was led from a court hearing on Tuesday.

The death of Mr Lane has struck a chord with many Australians on social media, who have expressed shock at the senselessness of the alleged murder.

Violent stories from the US are a daily inclusion in the Australian news cycle and it is easy to assume Americans have just become used to the carnage.

But a ninemsn reader from the US has written to express that this is not the case.

Florida-based war veteran John Melchiorre has told ninemsn that most Americans were also hit hard by the death of Mr Lane.

His letter highlights the struggle ordinary Americans face in dealing with the types of stories Australians read about the US every day.

Here is his letter, republished in full:

I live in the U.S.A., and have never had the honor of visiting your country. I'm here to talk about the tragic death of Christopher Lane. First let me say that Americans are not "used to" this kind of violence, and we don't work around it to live normal lives.


The death of young Christopher hit most Americans very hard, especially happening in the Oklahoma area, where a short few months ago, we had school children and adults killed by two EF 5 tornados, at 300 mph.

We are still reeling over the school children and teachers, who were gunned down in Connecticut, and about the death and destruction from the Boston bombings.

We do not take any of this in stride, it is not a part of our way of life, where we can shrug it off. We can't, because there are times, like now, when we as parents seem to have lost control of our parenting. At the ripe old age of 17, I served aboard an Air Craft Carrier during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at the beginning of the Viet Nam War.

After my discharge in 1967, I served for 30 yrs. in a Wartime Police Dept. It was a time in history where Law Enforcement Officers were hunted down, murdered, assassinated, and even had bounties put on us by terroristic subversive groups, who wanted nothing less than to "CHANGE" our way of government. This is where I learned the answer to the question, that the Lane family, and the people of Australia are asking;

WHY?

This is the only answer, so please look at it carefully, and the answer is that whether your from either country.....NO ONE REALLY UNDERSTANDS THE CONCEPT OF EVIL. Evil has existed since Adam and Eve, when Cain killed his brother Abel, and the reason why most of us don't have this conception is because we need to blame someone, we need to point a finger, we need to touch it, we need to show it on the news.

The same evil that brought down the Towers on 9-11, is the same evil that killed millions of people by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Po Pot, is the same evil that murdered Christopher. Evil is a tough subject to talk about, either from the pulpit or from the news media.

We can kill its source, but never evil itself, only GOD can do that. The faces of evil can be that of a 10 yr. old, 75 yr. old, any sex, or ethic origin, any social strata. Parents are the only ones who can keep evil at bay, by having a strong influence on their children, whether it be spiritual or not, but a strong family unit must be at hand, always.

All of this guarantees us nothing, BUT WHAT WE HAVE IS A CHANCE...A CHANCE...at it. I'm a father of two, and a grand father of three, so it is with the heaviest of hearts, that we send our thoughts and prayers to the Lane family, and the people of Australia.

There is the old saying, "That evil exists when good men do nothing", and two days after the Boston Bombings, there a tweet sent, it had to do with 3 sleeping Monkeys, next to an alarm clock, who; "SPEAK NO EVIL - SEE NO EVIL - HEAR NO EVIL-, AND WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK GOES OFF, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE"...but instead of springing into action, we turn over and hit the snooze alarm.

May GOD bless you, and may GOD bless Australia.