Separation issues

With all of the shootings in the last 2 weeks, I've seen a lot of interesting, and some just downright stupid posts made about them. I realize they are just how people deal with these things-to make light of it with humorous "memes," or post their opinions about them, etc etc, but some people really just make my head spin with the way they think. 

I read one post tonight, for example, criticizing a page that was created on Facebook for one of the shooters-the one who committed the shooting in Clackamas Town Center, to be exact. It was something about how that person-the shooter-was evil and the page was a slap in the face to the victims. Usually, I wouldn't think much of it, but for some reason, this one sort of bugged me.

I am not by any means condoning what Jake Roberts did when he walked into the mall, pulled out a gun, and open-fired on innocent people. Far from it, in fact. I don't honestly care if he spends all eternity in hell. BUT, I think of it this way; his family, his friends, people who had known him all of his life-those people are now mourning, just like the family and friends of his victims are with their losses. Maybe my thinking here is a bit demented-but I can't honestly wrap my head around people not being able to at the very least, understand that his family and friends are mourning a loss as well right now. Not mourning a loss of a murderer, but mourning a loss of someone they knew and loved his entire life. There is a difference between grieving over a loved one, and grieving over the loss of a killer. Nobody misses the person he became in his last minutes-but I'm sure they miss their son, their brother, their friend, etc. Him turning into a killer in his last minutes doesn't erase the fact that he was a person who was cared for in every other moment of his life. Condemning a family for mourning a loss is just low, in my opinion. The family had nothing to do with the shooting, they didn't put the gun in his hand and the idea in his head-the shooting was in no way a result of anything they did. I really have a hard time with wrapping my head around the idea that people can be so harsh on individuals who have nothing to do with any of it, other than they were friends with or related to the perpetrator.