Innocent people are dead, shot by a young man with a potent firearm, who died after an exchange of gunfire with police. Do you know what we’re referencing? By the date, you might know it’s those killed Monday by a 23-year-old bank employee in Louisville, but otherwise it could be one of dozens.
What are we doing here? What’s left to say? Nothing that hasn’t been said before, nothing that can’t best be said by the wails of the survivors, robbed once more of their loved ones in service to nothing, in furtherance of nothing, accomplishing nothing but to satisfy the malign fantasies of another angry recluse.
As the shots ring out in that familiar cadence — the drumbeat of death feared by those attending school, seeing a movie with friends, grocery shopping, attending a concert, or otherwise daring to exist in public — the multifaceted lives of those in the firing line are flattened to two things only.
They are props for the deranged grievance-settling of some washout whose motivating ideology is immaterial to the cold steel of the rifle that gives him, for a few brief moments, a pathetic facsimile of the authority he believes he is owed. And they are another batch of sacrifices for leaders who have, out of shark-eyed political self-preservation, abject cowardice or some mix of the two, allowed the gun to reign supreme, above life, above liberty.
It’s been 11 days since federal installations raised flags again after President Joe Biden ordered them flown at half-staff in remembrance of the six people killed at The Covenant School shooting in Nashville two weeks ago. Will the president sign another proclamation? If so, we recommend he make it auto-extending, or just permanent, to save himself the trouble of issuing it again and again. Let the perennial half-staff flags be the new symbol of our government, and its priorities.
In the meantime, we begin writing our next editorial: Innocent people are dead, shot by a young man with a potent firearm ...
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