This is a horrific incident, but I do have a little trouble with the framing of this article. We don’t know anything about motives obviously yet (Indeed, the fatality count is now at 50, not 20, which this article erroneously gives), but already the story is focusing on off duty police officers being shot.
Why? Are their lives somehow massively more valuable than rest of the victims’ lives? Is their some indication that he was targeted off duty officers? Seems like a major reach, since the off duty officers were from out of state and this guy apparently had no run ins with the law before this shooting. And unless they were holding neon signs over their heads indicating their jobs, it seems pretty unlikely he could have identified them in a crowd.
Yet for some reason, the article isn’t just saying a couple of off duty officers were shot. No, it goes on to list in some details which ones were injured, which ones were shot. I don’t see a listing of truck drivers, or plumbers, or teachers, or convenience store clerks or any other people…only off duty officers
And yes, I am making a point of them being off duty, because there is zero indication that any active first responders were targeted or shot. They were just part of the crowd of hundreds.
I hope we’ll all have the good sense and dignity to realize that it’s too soon to talk about the correlation between gun proliferation and tragedies like these. Prayers, however, are very helpful.
This pretty much blows the meme that a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.
Sadly, I’m pretty sure nothing will change. We can’t interfere with the second amendment rights of a mentally unstable man who wants to buy an arsenal to shoot up a crowd.
