As we’ve seen time after time with attacks, evil needs no rifles in its mission of hatred
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, all firearms could be summarily legislated out of existence, making America gun-free.
Weapons enthusiasts, get out of here! And take the Second Amendment with you.
Then this cultural reign of terror would be over — does anyone with half a brain really believe that?
Yet it remains the immediate response every time an armed madman snuffs out innocent lives, which happened again on Valentine’s Day in Parkland, Fla., where 17 high school students and staffers were slain by a young assailant brandishing an AR-15 rifle.
No words can capture the enormity of such a tragedy.
And yet there’s no reason to think it won’t happen again because something has clearly changed in America.
Horror such as this, which is almost getting to be commonplace, would have been inconceivable not that long ago; chilling bloodshed in a place like Parkland, a school setting right out of “Happy Days,” would have been incomprehensible. But to blame it on firearms is to take the easy way out.
When are we going to dig a little deeper and acknowledge it’s not what’s in a monster’s hands that imperils us; it’s what’s in his heart that puts us all at risk.
Evil has never required a firearm to accomplish its hateful mission. The Boston Marathon was terrorized by pressure cookers, remember? The 9/11 attackers used airplanes.
Charlie Manson’s “family” used knives. Ted Kaczynski and Tim McVeigh used bombs.
Remember how a carefree crowd celebrating Bastille Day alongside a waterfront promenade in Nice, France, was run over by a 19-ton truck, resulting in 86 deaths and 458 injuries?
Are our leaders so arrogant and clueless that they actually believe we can return to more pleasant and civil times with the passing of a few more laws?
By the way, the weapon used in Parkland, like the one that was used to kill 20 children and six staffers at Sandy Hook, was legally obtained.
To politicize this crisis is unconscionable.
It’s blind hatred that squeezes the trigger, that detonates the device, that presses down on the accelerator.
What we need to ask is, where does such malice comes from?
Please, don’t cheapen the conversation by blaming firearms.
Somewhere along the line we stopped educating kids about values and beliefs because we were told it was inappropriate, and we foolishly we acquiesced.
So what we’re experiencing now is simply a reaffirmation of law of the harvest, assuring us we will reap whatever we sow.
It’s not complicated. That’s what we’re doing now and what a bitter harvest it is.