(Source)

There were plenty of tweets and sta­tus updates that echoed the fear of going to the movie the­aters. The local radio sta­tions started to dis­cuss safety mea­sures for future movie­go­ers. Many peo­ple opted to avoid the the­ater after the shoot­ing. To me this is a clear act of terrorism.

There is more than one way to define ter­ror­ism but at its essence, ter­ror­ism is the use of vio­lence to intim­i­date. The rea­son behind the act could be emo­tional or polit­i­cal. Either way, vio­lence is used to evoke an action by those left to wit­ness the damage.

On Fri­day, July 20, the world was exposed to another act of ter­ror­ism. We still don’t know why James E. Holmes decided to open fire on an unsus­pect­ing audi­ence in a the­ater in Aurora, Col­orado. Every­one wants to know what causes some­one to kill another per­son. Even more what causes some­one to kill peo­ple a the­ater full of people?

We ask these ques­tions because we not only want to under­stand but pre­vent another tragedy like this from hap­pen­ing again. We feel that if we under­stand, then we can assign symp­toms, diag­no­sis and treat­ments. We feel at peace when we can stop bad things from happening.

I think it hard to find an answer to these ques­tions. Instead of focus­ing on how to con­trol the actions of oth­ers, I hope to con­trol my actions to these acts of vio­lence. Remem­ber I said that ter­ror­ism is the use of vio­lence to intim­i­date? While we don’t under­stand the rea­son­ing behind Holmes’ actions, it was clear that his actions cre­ated fear in peo­ple across the country.

Call me stu­pid, irre­spon­si­ble, or crazy I refuse to let this tragedy intim­i­date me. I believe fear is not pro­duc­tive. It cre­ates a foggy image of real­ity from which causes con­fu­sion, chaos, and ill judge­ment. By stay­ing in our homes con­sumed by fear, we have to con­tinue on with life. With living.

Where do we go from here? How do we react to this tragedy? We stand by Aurora, we help them lay their loved ones to rest, and more for­ward strong and in remem­brance. By doing this, we let oth­ers know we will not be intim­i­dated by this type of vio­lence. We will not tol­er­ate this type of violence.