'Cos It's No Fun Being Deaf In Hell?

So -- some guy goes over the edge (or already was) in Bratislava, Slovakia and shoots the place up, killing seven and injuring 15 before doing what he should have led his act with and blowing his own brains out.

I'm lookin' at a photo accompanying one of the news stories when I realize he was wearing hearing protection. What, he embarks on course of action almost certain to result in his own violent, bloody death before the end of the day and he's worried about hearing loss?

Then again, if he had any sense of proportion, he wouldn't have shot up an innocent family.

About that family: it turns out they were Roma -- the people you might know as Romany, the folks your grandmother called "Gypsies." Another report provides a little more background. You might want to save it for the next time someone tells you Europe is soooo much safer than the 'States 'cos they're "racially homogeneous."

No word on the shooter's own background. The imaginative reader can dream up whatever fits their own preconceptions, anything from Roma-on-Roma crime to a nitwit wanting to scrub out anyone who isn't sufficiently homogenized to suit his bent notions. Me, I do not so much care about his reasons -- there's no fixing this sort of thing by understanding it -- what I see is an individual who walked up to the rather low fence at at edge of civilized behavior, said, Screw that, and jumped over. Such persons have stopped being people in any meaningful way and joined mad dogs, plague, misplaced wolf packs and trash-raiding bears as threats; they should be dealt with as rabid dogs are. They can take their motives -- and their earmuffs -- into whatever next life awaits 'em. We don't need 'em here.