Shot Down

Along with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon stands out prominently as one of the twentieth century's three icons of peace. All three would die by gunfire.
~ from The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon by Gary Tillery ~

It truly IS ironic that all three of these men were assassinated.

In many ways, it goes to show that the concepts of peace and nonviolence are dangerous. For many people, the very idea of living in a world without violence is too scary to contemplate and so they silence the voices of peace with the very violence they don't want to give up.

We see this methodology at work as well in those areas of the world today in which two or more sides come together to try to work out a truce or ceasefire. In far too many cases, one of their allies submarines the effort by launching an attack. The attack leads to retaliation and the efforts to find peace fail.

It's one of the saddest commentaries on the state of our world that I can think of!