Mass Shootings

Let’s see. America has a mass shooting problem. Last year there were 647 mass shootings. This year, as of now, there have been 145.

Not a week passes without some disgruntled weirdo walking into a public space and opening fire. And, good Americans have reacted by declaring war against guns. Of course, the Tennessee killer was a transgendered and the Louisville killer hated Trump.

As for the voice of sanity, crying out in the wilderness, I bring you the words of Marion County sheriff, Billy Woods, who said last week, regarding three murders that happened in his jurisdiction: 

 “There are individuals out there viewing, and includes some of you media, that want to blame the one thing that has no ability or the capacity to commit the crime itself, and that’s the gun. These individuals committed the crime,” Woods told reporters.

 The sheriff said the suspects obtained the guns used in the shootings through car burglaries.

 “All the gun laws we got in place didn’t prevent it, did it? Neither will any new ones. Because here’s the fact: The bad guy is going to get a gun no matter what law you put in place. These juveniles shouldn't even possess a handgun but they did,” Woods added.

So, we have decided to go to war against guns. We did so in Memphis and in other places. Apparently, it has not changed very much. At the least, it beats holding the shooters accountable. In truth, given the choice between blaming guns and blaming shooters, we now prefer to blame the guns.

It is almost as though America has gotten into the business of protecting criminals, especially of exonerating them.

The result-- more shootings. Could there be a connection? Does the average mass shooter recognize that no one is going to condemn his actions, but that society will laud his courage? Not everyone, I hasten to add, but surely the mainstream media and the leftist politicians.

 As progressives stormed the Tennessee capital at Memphis, expressing their full-throated condemnation of guns, did anyone ask whether their constituents count among those who are more or less likely to commit crimes.

America has a crime problem, and one contributing factor is that the forces of local law enforcement have chosen to decriminalize crime. This makes those groups that seem to commit most of the crimes appear to be more law abiding-- statistically speaking.

As the old saying goes—it’s not the crime but the coverup.

Consider this. During the spring and summer of 2020 the nation’s blue cities were engulfed in violence. The result, the media and progressive politicians declared that nothing was happening. They spend the next two years railing against the insurrection of January 6, 2021. The reason—aside from their love for democracy—was that they wanted to cover up the violent insurrection that had been mounted in America’s blue cities.

The result, the nation has seen a rash of smash and grab robberies, directed against merchants in blue cities, where young gang members have taken it upon themselves to steal whatever they wanted. Did the insouciant attitude toward the 2020 insurrection trigger the epidemic of smash and grab robberies? It most likely did. Does anyone care? Not at all.

Does anyone denounce those who are committing those robberies? Not at all. People have learned to live with them, and to live with fewer grocery stores, departments stores and drug stores.

We have made certain kinds of violence into acceptable behavior.

Worse yet, when some crazed maniac commits mayhem, we do not condemn. We try to understand. We declare him to be a mental case and call for more treatment options. The Louisville shooter, we are assured, had mental health issues. The Nashville maniac was transgendered, and that means, by today’s calculus, that she was being persecuted.

Naturally, both are dead now—they went out in a blaze of glory. They must have known that they would not be condemned, that their families would not be ostracized, that they might even be praised for their courage and for advancing one or another cause.

In short, we have chosen not to hold shooters accountable. We have chosen not to hold insurrectionists or even gang bangers accountable. The result has been more of the same, more gun violence.

Naturally, we tell ourselves that we are on the side of the angels—because we are strongly opposed to guns.

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