“Every time there is a mass murder event, the vultures launch. It’s fascinating in a sickening way. A bunch of people get killed, and within minutes the same crew of anti-gun zealots shows up all over the news and social media, pushing the same tired proposals that we’ve either tried before or logic tells us simply can’t work.”
So begins the first chapter of Larry Correia’s In Defense of the Second Amendment.
A few pages later, Correia rightly notes that if the shooter can be tied to the media’s political enemies, these same zealots clamor all the louder. On the other hand, if the killer is an advocate for one of the media’s regular causes:
“Immediately the same exact people who’d just been screeching about evil Tea Party, racist, hate-monger, right-wing, cis-hetero, whatever phantoms begin urging calm and saying not to jump to conclusions. It isn’t fair to tar a big group because of the actions of a few. Watch out for that hateful rhetoric because you might inflame people.”
For the rest of In Defense of the Second Amendment, Correia brings truth to the falsehoods—the abused statistics, outright lies, and the abysmal ignorance of firearms—bandied about by the gun control crew. A skilled marksman, former owner of a gun shop, and a longtime firing range instructor, Correia is a no-holds-barred advocate for gun rights. He is pleased that more women and minorities want to learn to shoot, discusses how the constitutional right to firearms was intended in part to allow people to resist tyranny, and reveals how the news media plays a part in creating violence by sensationalizing it. Correia also brings to the table practical notes on such subjects as concealed carry and the legalities of self-defense.
As I read Correia’s thoughts on mass shootings, however, I found myself returning again and again to the March 27th shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The killer entered this private Christian school and murdered three of the staff and three 9-year-old children before being shot and killed by the police.
Correia’s descriptions above about mass murders proved accurate. The anti-gun zealots promptly popped out of the woodwork, broke out their placards, and began their protests.
Only this time a glitch occurred when police reported that the killer, 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, preferred using masculine pronouns, had once attended the school, and resented its Christian teachings. She left behind written documents that have yet to be released. We also know that this killer was under a doctor’s care for an emotional disorder.
In a brief but incisive article “Media, Democrats portray transgender community as ‘other’ victim of Nashville Mass Shooting,” Stacey Matthews reports that within hours of the shooting, some news outlets were already warning of negative reactions against the transgender community. Moreover, some protestors were claiming that Hale was a victim along with those she murdered, holding up seven fingers to include her with those she had gunned down.
Matthews, who also writes under the name “Sister Toldjah,” is sickened by these responses. She writes that Hale “wasn’t the victim here” and “that this even needs to be said shows how deeply we’ve fallen as a country on many fronts, especially moral and spiritual.”
Unlike so many others, Matthews goes to the real cause of gun violence in the United States. Guns don’t shoot themselves, and there are millions of people who have emotional disorders who never dream of shooting up a school. No—the real cause for so many of the gun deaths and injuries in our culture, from mass shootings to the weekly carnage occurring in cities like Chicago, New Orleans, and St. Louis, is the absence of God, law, and morality from American public life. Consequently, the anti-gun zealots reject the reality of evil in the human heart, turning instead to mechanistic solutions like gun control.
All indications are that Audrey Hale carefully planned her murderous assault. She purchased firearms and ammunition, pondered and wrote out her plans, and carried them out. What she did was deliberate, sick, and twisted.
And evil.