It’s hard to make up stuff like this. “A West Virginia man who was traveling across the United States gathering material for a book about kindness in America was shot and wounded while eating lunch in Montana, police said on Monday,” Reuters reports. “Ray Doland, 32, was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the arm following the incident near Glasgow, Montana on Saturday, Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier said. Doland was still in hospital on Monday but was expected to recover, Meier said.”

The sad and bizarre story comes on the heels of a new FBI crime stats report indicating a big jump in the number of murders in small towns across America.  While overall crime went down slightly last year, murders in towns of under 10,000 people spiked 18.3%.

We have come to expect violence in big cities, but now such evil is penetrating even small town America. Lord have mercy on us. We need a Third Great Awakening or we risk an implosion.