Since it’s Tuesday, here is my #MomUpdate: “Always testing the floor.” And now on with Tuesday.
Yesterday, in the type of suburb that embodies imagined American suburbia, a 21-year-old white man* took his handy, legally obtained death machine and murdered six people and injured 38 more at a 4th of July parade. And unlike Jayland Walker who was brutalized to death with bullets by police at a traffic stop in Akron, Ohio, the Highland Park alleged murderer, after being at large for hours, was taken into custody without incident.
Communities along the North Shore, the suburban area north of Chicago, cancelled all their festivities while he was running from law enforcement. Many were on lockdown.
But he was taken without incident.
After killing people in a similar barrage of bullets police used on Jayland Walker.
America.
Now people will talk about the Highland Park “person of interest’s” “mental health.” They’ll talk about what could have driven him to do such a thing, and they’ll tenderly raise the issue of his loneliness or his lack of friends or some other such excuse to make him something else.
He will become a victim of something or another, and we won’t talk about the fact that maybe if he didn’t have friends it was because he was the kind of guy who would allegedly take a weapon of war and murder strangers at a parade.
The problem is guns.
That is the problem. There are disaffected people all over the world; most of them don’t have access to AR 15s or weapons that can fire 60 rounds in a matter of seconds.
And never, ever forget making sure guns get in the hands of murderers has been the unflinching Republican policy for decades. And SCOTUS, packed by Republicans, just made sure it’s harder to regulate them.
Have a productive Tuesday.
*[Earlier version listed the alleged killer’s age as 22; I have corrected with updated information.]
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