I'm shifting my focus away from Northwest Arkansas and our state today for obvious reasons.
Does any adult with a shred of common sense believe the .45-caliber handgun Dylann Roof used to allegedly murder nine innocent people at the primarily black Emanuel AME church in Charlotte, S.C., is to blame for that despicable crime?
Suppose the fault is with the racist 21-year-old who chose to pull its trigger and repeatedly reload?
It seems clear to me that Roof's hate-filled rampage definitely provided yet another excuse for vote-pandering politicians favoring gun control to relaunch their familiar emotional campaign aimed at subverting the Second Amendment by further restricting the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens.
Yet some will continue to mistakenly believe the root of our problem lies with the lethal instrument in a psychopath's hands rather than the broken machine that motivates his or her mind and spirit.
In this instance, as it was 16 years ago with another Dylan and his buddy Eric at Columbine High School in Colorado, when one person murders others, the legitimate problem lies in the killer's heart, mind and home rather than the tool he chooses to use.
I believe their affliction fundamentally is an issue between good and evil within the psyches of these disturbed individuals, as well as contributions from their genetics and the lack of values conditioning. In their foggy sociopathic view, any reverence for life clearly is missing. Another's right to exist obviously has no relevance.
There's more. When a clearly disturbed person chooses to regularly abuse recreational and prescription drugs, such as Suboxone, a Schedule II narcotic for which Roof was charged with illegal possession in February, where do you suppose that can lead?
It matters not how many laws we pass, or emotional and rhetorical outcries are raised; this truism of good versus evil will remain unchanged, as it has through human history. That truth, as with others, will endure even when crushed to earth by self-serving politics.
Does anyone honestly believe another law would have stopped these senseless mass killings or those preceding it? If so, I sincerely wish you well in your grossly oversimplified view of reality.
Very unfortunately, we are at the point in our beloved country where a relative fraction of emotional, Saul Alinsky-ite loudmouths and looters and professional politicos with agendas are openly using orchestrated outcries to demonstrate against false scenarios while demonizing our police. Unbelievable stuff. isn't it? And, I believe, wholly calculated and funded.
Thankfully, the good people of Charleston have chosen the rational reaction by venting their profound grief through unity and forgiveness.
Meanwhile, states like our own increasingly are allowing citizens to legally carry sidearms for self-protection. Agree or not, I feel certain had any of Roof's victims at the Bible study session in the South Carolina church been armed last week, the young killer who reportedly reloaded at least five times likely would have been stopped before being able to slay nine innocent people.
If you doubt that, I invite you to recall the matter of Jeanne Assam of Colorado, who in 2007 used her licensed, concealed firearm to stop a gunman who'd invaded her church before he could claim many lives. She credited God's intervention. I credit that and her courage.
Following the latest church shooting, our president, of course, immediately politicized the incident by saying, "This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it."
I believe he's implying even more proposed restrictions on private gun ownership, as if doing so matters a whit in preventing these horrors that I believe history shows are routinely fueled and amplified by drugs.
I went hunting for relevant statistics and found the IJReview, that reported the amount of mass gun violence per capita across the world. Our nation ranked sixth behind Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel and Switzerland. Incidentally, the nations ahead of ours all have "restrictive" gun regulations.
As for adding more gun laws to the litany already on the books, I count three Roof violated that weren't being enforced. First, he should never have acquired a gun with his previous criminal record. Secondly, he was prohibited from taking a gun into a church. Finally, he didn't have a concealed carry license.
Sadly, not one of those laws slowed him from committing his crimes attributed to his sick stated goal to start a race war.
Police say Roof has admitted to the killings based on his racial hatred. Now the feds and state are debating on which one gets to notch what appears a likely conviction. Either way for me, this kind of evil (if Roof's guilt is proven to a jury, of course) clearly deserves nothing less than South Carolina's death penalty.
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].<
Editorial on 06/23/2015