Keep guns away from those who hate
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
But vile, hateful words spewing from the mouth of a person with access to a firearm? Well, that’s a different story.
Last week it was a ballfield in Alexandria, Va. A clearly troubled man who held a grudge against President Trump and Republicans – and who had left an alarming trail of virulent screeds on social media – decided words were no longer enough.
After asking a passerby about the political affiliation of the group holding a baseball practice in the first early-morning light, and being told they were Republican members of Congress, James Hodgkinson pulled out a rifle and opened fire on the group, seriously wounding House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and five others.
Only the brave actions of two Capitol police officers, assigned to the Whip’s security detail, prevented a slaughter. They reacted immediately, confronting Hodgkinson, drawing fire away from those on the field, and fatally shooting the gunman.
It’s clear Hodgkinson leaned to the Left. He was a vocal Bernie Sanders supporter who volunteered on his campaign. He belonged to Facebook groups with names like “Terminate the Republican Party.”
But this isn’t really about Right or Left, it’s about right and wrong. Sanders quickly condemned this act of despicable violence.
Hodgkinson was exercising his First Amendment right to free speech. Despite how abhorrent we find them, that precious right forms the underpinning of our democracy.
Hodgkinson also exercised another right guaranteed by the Constitution. He legally obtained firearms.
At what point his beliefs morphed from dangerous thoughts and words to criminal deeds isn’t known.
What is known is that it is a toxic combination, that kind of hate-filled beliefs along with access to guns.
Tiara Parker knows a little bit about people with dangerous thoughts who have access to firearms.
One year ago, she was enjoying a rite of youth, a night out on the town with friends.
Parker was inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., when that same evil elixir of hate and guns exploded in an unthinkable act of violence.
Omar Mateen opened fire inside the club. Before he was done, 49 people were murdered in the worst mass shooting incident in U.S. history. Another 58 were wounded.
Parker, who was with her 18-year-old cousin Akyra Murray, was shot as she and several others hid inside a bathroom stall while the gunman went on his murderous rampage. Parker was wounded; Murray was killed.
Pulse was a well-known gay nightclub in the Orlando area. But the FBI said it found no evidence that Mateen specifically targeted the nightspot. That did not stop some people from labeling it a hate crime. It is believed Mateen was looking to avenge a U.S. strike against an Islamic leader. President Obama branded the mass killing both a “hate crime and a terrorist act.”
A year later, Parker, a Philadelphia native, was in Ardmore along with Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. to support what many would see as common sense: Keeping people with hate in their hearts away from getting their fingers on the trigger.
Casey is again sponsoring the Disarm Hate Act, which is designed to prevent people convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes from purchasing or possessing a firearm.
Casey presented figures from the Southern Poverty Law Center that show an increase in hate crimes, along with a spike in hate groups since 2000.
Casey claimed a 50 percent spurt in these groups, along with 43,000 hate crimes involving use or threat of a gun in the past few years. “One thing we know pretty well, I think, it’s human nature and I think it’s very evident throughout our recent history, especially in these horrific instances that we’ve highlighted today, is that hate unchecked usually grows in almost every instance,” Casey said. “And hate unchecked with the use of a firearm can have a destructive endpoint.”
Would the Disarm Hate Act have stopped either Hodgkinson or Mateen? Perhaps not.
Far be it from us to set up roadblocks to anyone’s First Amendment rights. And we realize the right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms. This argument is not about that. It’s not about politics.
It’s about moving to keep citizens safe from those who, having demonstrated hate, should face some roadblocks to possession of a gun.
It should be clear that we have entered a new, deadly age of political discourse.
In this age of super-heated political rancor, fueled by social media that seems unable or unwilling to quell dangerous sentiment and calls to violence, adding the potential of firearms to such a toxic atmosphere seems like something that should come under review.
Keeping guns out of the hands of those with a pattern of spewing hate does not seem like too much to ask.