Tell two young boys that our gun laxness is just fine
This world is inhabited by many good souls. But dreadfully there are some among us who are more mutant than man.
Especially the mass killers wearing a death mask — the sort of fierce, unwavering expression you see on a gargoyle, frozen in malevolence.
Who knows what poison percolates in the labyrinthine layers of their fissured psyches?
They are sharks among goldfish, scavengers who dig their claws into people and rip them into shreds.
I’m referencing the horrific mass shooting on the Fourth of July in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, that killed seven people and injured dozens. Robert Crimo III is the 21-year-old alleged author of that massacre.
There have been more than 300 mass shootings in the U.S. this year. More than 22,000 people have died due to gun violence in the country this year. The sacrificial lamb count in defense of the Second Amendment is staggering, senseless and sinful.
Some estimate there are 350 million guns in the U.S. As of July 1, the U.S. population was 334,805,269. Math never seemed to add up for me in school, but even I can count more guns than people.
Little wonder that hails of bullets routinely strafe the sky. Even with the recent bipartisan gun legislation signed into law by President Biden, our gun laws don’t have enough teeth to put a real bite on the problem.
A pox on those legislators who would rather suck face with a rhinoceros than ban an assault rifle that has no business in the hands of civilians. It utterly confounds and astonishes me that so many legislators have such a permissive attitude toward people with uproarious appetites for destruction and annihilation.
The grim toll of gun violence on the victims screams for justice when you put human faces to it.
Two-year-old Aiden McCarthy’s parents were both killed shielding him at the Highland Park parade. A GoFundMe fundraising effort on little Aiden’s behalf has raised over $2 million. The money will help provide for him, but it won’t replace his parents.
When a passerby plucked Aiden to safety, the 2-yearold asked: “Is my momma and dadda coming back?”
No they aren’t, Aiden. You are now an orphan — courtesy of a gunman who hopefully at some point in this life suffers pain akin to a football passing through his kidneys and has a reserved seat in hell in the next life.
The gunman didn’t kill 8-year-old Cooper Roberts. Just devastated his body. Cooper’s spine was severed in the shooting, paralyzing him from the waist down.
If that doesn’t boil the bile in your gallbladder, you are a human being devoid of compassion. I am certain that I am not alone in wanting to snap the spine of that depraved gunman.
Crimo is somewhat of a tragic figure himself. Growing up dysfunctional in a dysfunctional family noted for a plethora of 9-1-1 calls isn’t likely to give a young man the moral judgment of a monk.
Police visited the Crimo family home twice in 2019 due to alleged threats made by the then kid. But his parents declined to file complains and no crimes were charged.
That had harrowing repercussions. Had police or the parents intervened then, the kid with the itchy trigger finger may not have been able to legally purchase the Smith & Wesson M&P rifle that he allegedly used during the massacre.
Without that firepower, his discontent would not have been able to explode on the gunpowder of his personality that fateful Fourth of July.
Tell me that won’t haunt Aiden McCarthy and Cooper Roberts the remainder of their lives. America’s laissez-faire attitude toward guns let those two poor kids down.
They deserved better than that.