REFLECTIONS ON ROANOKE

Yeah, I know, you were expecting me to respond to Dave (the liberal, non-uncle one) and his take on the Police Executive Research Forum’s suggestions on what police need to change in response to Black Lives Matter and all the rest of the latest spate of anti-cop stuff.  And one commentator here at the blog (and more in private correspondence) asked me to address the recent atrocity in Roanoke. The latter seems more timely at the moment; the issues Dave discussed will be with us for a very long time, and can wait a moment, at least in this space.

Two promising, good young people are murdered by yet another disaffected loser whose motives straddle “workplace violence” and “hate crime.”  The killer was (A) a black man who killed white people to avenge the murders of the innocent in a black church by a white racist; (B) a gay man who felt discriminated against by straights, who killed two heterosexuals; (C) the owner of two cats (whose lives he apparently also snuffed out) and whose home when searched by police after the murders was filled with cat urine and feces, and (D) was obviously mentally ill.  He didn’t buy his murder weapon until after the atrocity at the church in the Carolinas, and he obviously planned his sick murder spree long in advance. With no documented mental health or criminal history, he would have passed any “background check.’

Politicians from Hillary Clinton on down have demanded “more gun control” as the answer, many of them blaming the National Rifle Association and, by extension, its millions of law-abiding members of all genders, races, and belief systems.

Good Lord…

I suppose we should at least be glad they didn’t blame all gay people, or all black people, or every owner of a feline pet, or every person who ever sought psychological counseling.  Racism, homophobia, “crazy cat people,” and the mentally ill are all off limits, but it’s always open season on gun owners, it seems.

We all remember the crazed narcissist in California not so long ago, who killed multiple people with contact weapons and ran some over with his car as well as shooting a few, and who posted his sick screed on YouTube like this latest sicko did, before he faced armed people who might fight back and killed himself at that moment.  History repeats itself.  Then, as now, the father of one of the victims went on TV and declared himself the latest warrior for “gun control.”

At least, the father of the young woman murdered in Roanoke seems to be limiting his crusade to keeping guns out of the hands of crazy people. I wish him luck with that.  Going back over decades, the politically correct de-institutionalization of the dangerously insane opened a Pandora’s Box we may never be able to close.  Complicating the matter further are anti-gunners like the politician who said any military combat vet must have post-traumatic stress disorder (and, by clear implication, must be denied ownership of firearms), or those whose psych degrees are burdened with clueless political correctness that makes them believe anyone who would want to own a gun must be nuts in the first place.

The father of that tragically murdered young woman in Roanoke was quoted as saying he might need to buy a gun now.  The implication is that he’ll need it to protect himself from crazy gun nuts.  The California dad has now faded from the scene; perhaps he realized it was about dangerous aberrant people, not guns. Maybe the Virginia dad will, too.  As a father myself, my heart goes out to each of them.

But, for us gun owners or those who believe differently, there are cruel truths we all have to face.

Those include:

How we think things should be is not the same as how things are.
Crazy and terrible people, unrestrained by society, will do crazy and terrible things.
Laws which, by definition, will be obeyed only by the law-abiding will do NOTHING to deter those who, by definition, are law-breakers.
When you don’t have enough hose-dragging firefighters, bandage-bearing paramedics, or gun-carrying cops to shepherd 320 million people one-to-one 24/7, those people need fire extinguishers, first aid kids, and guns to ward off death until the designated professionals can be summoned in to help.

And yes, dammit, it IS that simple.

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