Anger is easy. Anger is natural. When life is taken violently, without a moment’s notice, anger is inevitable.
The closer you are to the person, or the more you associate with and appreciate the person’s life mission, character and attributes, the higher anger rises and the deeper it sets.
Anger in the Madison County area has come in swelling, crashing waves over the past few months. Loved ones, family members, public servants have been gunned down in senseless acts of aggression.
Random gunfire on the west side of Anderson has claimed victims and wrought fear spiked with anger.
Shouldn’t residents of all neighborhoods be able to walk the streets, drive to the store, spend a quiet evening chatting on the porch or watching TV in the living room without the staccato repeat of gun fire announcing more bloodshed?
The primitive desire to strike back, to exact revenge only adds to the crescendo of violence, adds to the fear and hatred tearing a neighborhood apart.
Anger is easy. Anger is natural.
From urban to rural, no place is immune to the senseless violence.
In late July, Randall Coomer, a 38-year-old father and husband, was shot to death near his rural Daleville home. Coomer confronted a group of people after they had raced down his country road shouting profanities at his wife and flipping her off.
Coomer went after them, a physical altercation followed. Police say an 18-year-old Anderson man pulled the trigger that ended Coomer’s life.
His family and friends demand that the culprit and his accomplices pay the price. Their anger is deep. Their anger is natural.
Anger is most dangerous when it has the capacity to divide groups of people from one another or to cause hatred of others who were not involved in the commission of the violence.
According to investigators, Elwood Police Officer Noah Shahnavaz, who happens to be white, was gunned down by a man, who happens to be Black, early in the morning as July slipped into August.
The young officer didn’t have a chance. He pulled a car over, and the gunman emerged with an assault rifle, riddling the police cruiser with bullets and killing the young officer.
The suspect had spent years in prison after shooting at Indianapolis police. He had been released early on good behavior.
Anger at the shooter is natural. So is anger at the system that allowed the man’s release.
But there’s another sort of anger that is inexcusable – anger at a group of people who had nothing to do with this crime. In this case, it would be known by one word: racism.
Anger of these origins has the awful power to divide people, to set us at odds with one another and to multiply the violence.
Instead, the death of Noah Shahnavaz should unite us in common mourning and in the common mission of solving the deadly riddle of gun violence.
Our response to other senseless shootings shattering the peace of our community has that power, too.
Anger is natural and easy. But unity is healing. Unity is enduring.
Scott Underwood
Editor, The Herald Bulletin (Anderson)
