Sorry for your loss Brad.

That is a very nice piece.

I was a toddler when my dad pointed to the radio and said, "Listen to this. This is important." It was coverage of the moon landing. My dad was an aerospace machinist and had helped build the 1st Boeing 747 (I returned to Boeing for my first job after college) and, at the time, was a machinist at Lockheed. I'm old enough to have seen the great America that existed post-WWII. We were a nation bolstered by the hard work required for a great victory. We made stuff. We worked hard. We tried to keep families together. I look at what my folks and their friends accomplished with little education and compare it to my generation and it's night and day. Sad, really.

Dear Brad,

I'm sorry for your loss, and the loss to the families of your friends, whose lives were taken without remorse.

Force is mindless, and truly brutes have only that at their disposal.

Sadly, it is the general populace, and specifically those to whom a mind is the most powerful tool, that are too often victims of the brutes.

My sincere condolences to you.

Kind regards,
NMA

of course I am sorry for the loss of your good friends.
I, however, rejoice in the article. If only Colorado Springs Gazette would have had your editorials. How we would have worked to get to meet you personally! Cheyenne citizens are lucky indeed, and I applaud the paper for hiring you. Patriots!

As a numismatist, I read this story too often. I am sorry for your loss.

Bravo, Brad, bravo!

If I could upvote this more, I would.

The power of ideas that come from our minds, not our brains is key...the connection is conscience.
Those goons had not that connection.

I am sorry for your loss.

Yet another reason people should exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.

So sorry for the loss you must endure. I know close-up and personal what it's like to lose someone close to you through senseless violence. You will feel anger and frustration, but folks will tell you it gets better with time. It doesn't. The abrasive edges may smooth out, but the anger and frustration are now a part of your life. Forever.

Brad, sorry for your and Cheyenne's loss. My dad used to run a full line music store in Cheyenne, it was a nice place to live.
A friend today commented on the crimes and drug use that just seem to get worse. Maybe, because the cause is never addressed. The mind and the personal responsibility factor never make the news. It's the flag's fault, it's the gun's fault, it's poverty, it's race.
Sorry, but no, it is the person's fault for not seeing they have a personal responsibility to think, to achieve, and to earn what they have. No one has ever questioned the real causes of the Columbine shootings, just the gun's fault. No, it was outcome based education, psychotropic drugs, and government tinkering online with those boys - all sending them far from reality, reason and thinking. It happens over and over, and the media seems brain dead to it all. As a retired journalist, it was frustrating trying to address reality with an editor into cronyism and quick judgements more than reality..

Sorry for your loss.
I spent 21 years wearing blue and looking such "goons" as you describe them in the eye.
That ended May, 2003.
I have no desire to so much as see that prison again.

Brad, I am sorry for the tragic loss of your friends.

So sorry. I guess all I can add is: Ain't it the
truth!

It does seem that as a species, we seem to be losing the capability for rational thought. I cite just one instance where I find logic and rationality to have utterly escaped what passes for thought in the medical research community.

I am over 70 years old, and have not had so much as a case of the sniffles in over 30 years. I've taken some significant falls in my senior years, without any detectable damage. I appear about 15 years younger than my calendar age. My family history is completely devoid of any instance of cancer, heart disease, or dementia. I have tried to offer myself as an object of medical research, to see what there is about my genetic makeup that makes me so vital, and have failed to raise any interest.

As an engineer, I guess I think differently from medical researchers. If I'm building something, I look first to see what design has been proven successful, and seek to emulate that success. I have been told flatly by medical researchers, "We don't study healthy people." I was staggered by that premise.

With today's ability to dissect genetic structure, it would seem obvious to take apart my genes to find what's working right, and how that might be used to develop a preemptive strategy to make a healthier populace. What I've discovered is that medical researchers aren't willing to buck the tide set in motion by ignorant bureaucrats to give grants to reactive medicine. Money to study dysfunctional, sick bodies takes precedence over the concept of investigating what makes very healthy people that way.

My sincere condolences on your loss. An awesome article and spot on. Thanks.