Following the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings over the weekend, there were sincere appeals to government leaders to ‘do something’ to prevent something like this from ever happening again.
At a Dayton vigil, people chanted, “Do Something! Do Something!”
‘Doing something’ is a good idea. But what?
In Dayton, where the killer murdered his own sister and then proceeded to mow down eight others outside a nightclub at 1am, the killer was a registered Democrat, a gun enthusiast, and, according to what is believed to be his Twitter account, held “extreme left views.” He liked Elizabeth Warren, hated Immigration and Customs Officers, was a fan of Antifa and, in the hours before he took his rifle to a night club, ‘liked’ tweets about the El Paso mass shooting.
In high school, he got in trouble for keeping a “hit list” of people he’d like to kill, a “rape list” for girls he’d like to rape. CNN reports the police were notified of the kill list, but it’s unclear if the cops, school district or his parents did anything to treat his violent ideations.
In El Paso, where the killer, an apparent eco-terrorist, reportedly left behind a manifesto about an Hispanic immigration “invasion” at the cost of the environment. He discussed the Christ Church terrorist’s eco-fascist beliefs in the screed he left behind. The killer’s murderous rampage at a Walmart killed 22 people, eight of whom were Mexican citizens. Reporters said the killings were motivated by “white supremacist” views, a motivation denounced by President Trump, but police don’t really know the motivation. The killer added that his views predated President Trump‘s. Weird.
The killer lived with his grandparents while he went to community college.
Authorities are labeling the shooting as an act of terrorism.
At this writing, authorities believe that both killers bought their guns legally. That means both passed background checks. School officials knew about the kill and rape lists and cops investigated. Both killers wrote about their murderous ideations on social media. In the end, the government didn’t “do something” to stop these killings from happening.
Who knew or could have known enough to ‘do something’?
In the end, the only ones who knew the full record and who could ‘do something’ were the people closest to the killers, not the government.
When someone’s mentally ill, which these Leftist crazies were, somebody has to be able to get them help – even when they don’t want it.
This is a tough call. I’m a civil libertarian.
But instead of going after everybody else’s Second Amendment rights and forsaking the right to be safe in public spaces, let’s make it easier to evaluate people who appear to be mentally ill. And make the bar high.
That means that instead of coming up with ‘something’ to deprive law abiders of their God-given rights, families get the legal standing to get these people an evaluation before they’re loosed on the innocents at a Walmart in El Paso or a nightclub in Dayton.
The killers held extreme leftist views. The ‘do something!’ chanted by the shocked and saddened crowds in Dayton should be a wake up call that evaluating severe mental illness is best left to those closest to the person – not the angry mob.
