I did say last time out that the worry is that this country being wont to copy American fads with colonial ferocity, even murderous ones, we could always find ourselves in the grip of a Sandy-Hook-type horror. But I did say as well that that worry wasn’t all that urgent, we still had a culture that militated against the kind of alienation that could induce someone to massacre schoolchildren in cold blood.
Gunshots served to welcome the year—gunshots that killed a total of nine innocents and 13 others whom law enforcers described as “members of a big criminal group.”
Only a week old, and the year 2013 is already groaning under the weight of a terrible burden: the death, by gun, of many innocents.
When 41-year-old Ronald “Bossing” Bae went on a shooting rampage in his neighborhood in Kawit, Cavite, the other day, indiscriminately killing eight and wounding about 11 others, the local media promptly labeled his heinous act as that of an “amok.” “Bigla na lang siyang nag-amok,” reporters said, echoing the words of Bae’s stunned neighbors.
