Is it Safe to Go Grocery Shopping Anymore ?

As many Minnesotans were preparing to watch the local Friday evening news, wondering if the Federal Government would be shutting down in a few hours because of a budget dispute, or if the Red River, which was about to crest, would be flooding their homes and the area around them, another headline news story was breaking right here in Minnesota.

2 people in a Festival Foods grocery store break-room in Brooklyn Park, Mn., a suburb of Minneapolis, were shot. One of the victims died at the scene and the other died at a local hospital. The suspected gunman later turned the gun on himself, and took his own life. Suddenly the local Friday evening news stations in Minnesota would be reporting on a totally different headline news story then had been anticipated.

Memories quickly came back of another grocery store shooting incident that happened just over 3 months ago in an Arizona grocery store parking lot. As many of us that are familiar with that story know, 6 lives were tragically lost in that senseless shooting incident and many more were injured, including congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, who is still hospitalized because of the injuries she received on that fateful Jan. day.

Weather it's Arizona, Minnesota or anywhere in between, I'm beginning to wonder if it's safe to even go togrocery shopping at our local grocery store anymore. Will we return home safe and sound, or will some deranged individual who has a bone to pick with someone, put us in harms way? Scary as that thought may be, random shootings are on the rise all over America and innocent lives are changed forever because of it.

I'm not suggesting that we live in constant fear, as that's not the way life is meant to be lived, but it's becoming more and more obvious everyday that we need to be more aware of our surroundings. The Festival Foods grocery store shooting took place about an hours drive from where I live. I never felt that I wouldn't safe before when I went grocery shopping at my local supermarket, but today I'm beginning to wonder if something like that could just as easily happen here in small town Minnesota, sad as that may sound.

Several students from the nearby University of Minnesota campus watched as police converged on the area where the suspected gunman's body was found. It was a terrible scene for students to experience, who themselves have been exposed to a number of on-campus shootings across America in recent years.

I guess there's no simple answers, in this fast changing world we live in, as to why so much tragedy seems to surround us all. It's very sad though, in my opinion, when it's no longer safe to go shopping at Safeway.

Sources:kare11news
personal opinion