Politics above principal in the wake of the Jacksonville shooting
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Excerpt: As news of the second mass shooting in Florida this year broke Sunday afternoon, survivors of the Parkland shooting expressed outrage as well as empathy while continuing their call for change to gun laws.
“How many mass shootings in your state will it take for you to do something?” David Hogg, another survivor of the Parkland shooting and prominent activist, tweeted as he tagged U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.
Student activists have criss-crossed the country over the past few months as part of the Road to Change tour. The bus tour stopped in several cities to meet with government officials about gun control and to help young people register to vote.
Hot Take: It’s predictable but sad that before any facts of a case are in there’s a rush to push a political agenda but such is the world we live in these days. Just as there are more deaths via shootings in Chicago than anywhere else in the country despite harsh gun control restrictions in the area, we have the calls for additional gun control across our state even when it was evident that the weapon wasn’t legally purchased in our state. As we’ve come to learn there’s, yet another mental health issue gone awry and legitimate concern about why David Katz, given his mental health issues as a teenager was able to purchase his firearms last month. That conversation and related reform conversation should take place. Rushing to judgement and blaming people unrelated to the incident only helps poison an already toxic well.
What we do have is another “soft-target”, a gun free zone, that was taken advantage of by a person bent on carrying out evil. A person who had a history of mental issues who was allowed to purchase firearms and brought them into our state to carry out the attack. It also still defies logic that a “gun-free” zone is going to be lawfully adhered to by someone who’s looking to murder people as was the case here. Murder isn’t exactly legal either. What it does ensure though, is that those who are decent, law abiding folks, will be defenseless when confronted with the evil.
In the case of the shooting on Sunday at the Madden tournament the perpetrator nor the victims were locals and the facts of the case take the form of something more analogous to a work place shooting than a public event.