Amazing Grace Options

[Dawn Duree]

I remember watching a youtube video when Vince led the audience in Amazing Grace when everyone gathered at the Ryman the morning the shootings happened at Virginia Tech. I remember Vince said he had gotten the call about the shootings and and he left the golf course to participate in the memorial service. I remember watching all the events of the shooting unfold on the TV. I remember being so heartbroken, thinking that V Tech didn't look much unlike my alma mater, NIU. It could happen anywhere.

So here I was tonight in the Duke Ellington ballroom at NIU singing Amazing Grace in a prayer vigil for the five slain students at NIU. It's Chicago, so the Reverend Jesse Jackson was there, rather than Vince. But it was the same Amazing Grace, the same heartache, the same pain. I closed my eyes as I sang and could not believe it was happening again, and this time in my own backyard.

NIU, V Tech, Columbine, and all the other senseless shootings, they make no sense. I wish and pray that this sort of thing will stop.

My sincere thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their friends and family.

[countrycrazy]

I don't know about some of the other shootings that have happened in the last week (ABC News reported that there has been 4 school shootings in the past 7 days), but the common denominator with the NIU shootings the V Tech shootings and the Nebraska Mall shootings was that all 3 of the killers had some sort of psychiatric problem. On our local news at 6pm, rocker Ted Nugent said that Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but yet this kid with mental problems was able to get his hands on a shotgun and kill at least 5 innocent people. I think what needs to be done is to not only do criminal background checks on anyone who wants to buy a gun, but also check to see if they've been admitted to a psychiatric hospital or have had any kind of psychiatric problems. I'm not saying that it will stop *all* the random mass murders that have happened, but it might keep guns out of the hands of some of the people who have the ability to just 'snap' at any time and go on a random manhunt intending to kill as many people as possible all because they're not happy with *their* life and want to take other lives along with their own before they go, intending for other families to feel the pain of what their own family will be going thru after they take their own life.