Just a Few Inches.

An incident on Monday left two Sheriff's deputies shot, when a person sought in several counties for several crimes decided to shoot his way out of his vehicle at a traffic stop.
Both deputies are doing well.
In an article today about the shootings Monday, one of the detectives working on the case was interviewed by a newspaper reporter. During his comments, he held up his thumb and index finger and implied that sometimes life comes down to just a few inches.
To their colleagues who face this danger daily, a few inches can make all the difference between life and death.
It's difficult to think about being in a situation where it would be necessary to either give oneself up to the law or shoot your way out. The idea of turning a weapon on another human being, let alone an officer of the law is repellent to me. But there are those out there who have no qualms with this kind of behavior. Those who make these sorts of choices daily.
Everyday we face thousands of decisions that affect ourselves and our families but rarely do we consider the reality of some of the consequences of those decisions. It is hard, perhaps because of human nature, to think about how each and every one of our choices will pan out. To think too deeply on them would seem like unhealthy deterministic obsession. Yet, if we consider briefly that any one of our choices could go terribly wrong at any time as a simple result of poor planning or distraction (and there are so many today), we tend to look a little harder at the consequences of those choices a little harder.
I'm not suggesting that each of us is master of our own destiny. Somethings that happen to us are completely arbitrary. A friend's friend who lives near Aurora, Colorado and who decided at the last minute not to go see the particular screening of The Dark Knight Rises on the night when the tragic shootings took place, found that his decision saved his life. A woman driving home recently found herself pinned under a huge tree that simply fell at the moment her car went by. None of her decisions had any affect on that tree falling. She survived, and after an extremely exciting few hours was safe at home with her family and friends.
No one knows when we will face death. Some of us won't even know that it happened. Such is nature.
I believe, though, that it is good to keep our minds at a level of thought that reminds us frequently that our actions and the actions of others can and do have a direct result in the lives around us.
The deputies did their jobs very well. They encountered a fool who had grown accustomed to making poor decisions and his consequences will not be pleasant. Those two men knew when they left for their shifts, that they might not come home. It is a daily aspect of their jobs. One that I know I couldn't face. I'm extremely conscious of the fact that these two men are not just deputies. They are sons, fathers, brothers, cousins, grandsons, uncles and friends. They are as human as the rest of us. And everyday they face countless situations that could end badly.
I'm extremely grateful to them and all of our law enforcement officers the world over who perform their duties honorably and selflessly to protect us every single day. Some of those days, like Monday of this week, life comes down to just a few inches.
The best that we can do for these men and women who risk so much for our protection and safety is to be conscious of our own decisions. We must remember to think. We must remember to be aware that some of our decisions will not only affect ourselves but those around us.
There will always be fools who cannot make good choices, but they will invariably be victims of their own poor choices. As our youngest frequently says, "You've got to think!"