Texas killer caught; Serbia school shooting

Maybe the best thing that could happen is for Colt’s Manufacturing or Glock to choose a transgender celebrity influencer to the their new spokesperson.

It’s bad when I read the New York Times headline “7th Grader Opens Fire at School in Serbia, Killing 8 Children” and my very first thought is that it’s strange some U.S. town is named “Serbia.” The shooting actually took place in the European country of Serbia, in a Belgrade school. A boy apparently stole his dad’s handgun and fired into a crowd.

Photo by Tom Def on Unsplash

Police caught the Texas mass murderer hiding under a pile of laundry in a closet, just miles from where he committed his terrible act. A citizen’s tip let authorities to the house in Conroe, about 20 miles from Cleveland, where Francisco Oropeza killed five of his neighbors, including children, with an AR-15. This happened because the victims’ family asked Oropeza to stop shooting in his front yard at night because it disturbed their baby’s sleep.

I can’t think of a more evil act committed for no reason at all. A conservative Twitter user expressed many shared opinions, tweeting “this man deserves to be sentenced to 50 years in the electric chair.” I am sure the death penalty will be introduced, but I also know that back in “my day,” in New Hampshire, if the state police found a killer somewhere, they’d make sure he ended up in the woods, armed, and justice would be served good and hard, then and there. These days of everyone’s a news photographer wouldn’t permit the simpler version of those days.

I am going to make two apologies at this point. First, I’ve not been writing as much as usual. Perhaps this should not be something I should apologize for, and some of The Racket News readers are probably happy for the break. I’ve been doing some self-improvement in taking classes and that’s consumed my time normally spent at the keyboard.

Second, this is going to be a short post, for the reason stated above, plus the fact that these two stories don’t leave a whole lot to say.

Guns plus poor mental health, plus access by young, stressed children, plus alcohol or drugs equals a deadly combination. Unfortunately, in the U.S., we have a superabundance of all these things.

In 2021, around 70,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses. Many of these deaths happened because drug dealers cut fentanyl into every other pill, weed, or meth dose they sell, to increase the high, and they do a poor job measuring, so people take the drugs and die. In the same year, 48,830 Americans were killed by firearms.

Now, people with an agenda will tell you that the gun problem can’t be as bad as the fentanyl problem because 30% more were killed by fentanyl as with guns. That’s a wrong-headed conclusion. The drug-gun connection is a pyramid and a feedback loop. Drugs feed into gun deaths, and gun deaths are a harder problem to solve, since drugs are consumable and guns remain in the hands of individuals.

We need to solve both problems, by enforcing existing laws, acknowledging inconvenient truths on all sides of these issues, and acting like responsible people instead of political partisans bent on one version of utopia (that excludes all other versions). Drugs come in over the border, so we need to secure the border. Guns need to be stopped from straw-sales and undocumented personal transfers. Guns need to be secured by responsible people to keep kids from getting them. Cities with gang problems by definition have drug and gun problems. Ignoring gang violence because it doesn’t generate headlines and votes in big cities consumed with race identity politics is a recipe for more gun and drug deaths.

The police need to be funded, but not cut loose to do whatever they want, which by now I think we all agree is true. It took the cops 20 minutes to get to the crime scene in Cleveland, Texas, which is unacceptable.

Maybe the best thing that could happen is for Colt’s Manufacturing or Glock to choose a transgender celebrity influencer to the their new spokesperson. The resulting boycott by the very people buying their products would be enough to give us a measurable pause in the number of guns in circulation. It would probably be the best use of “woke” I can think of.

That, plus, if you have guns, lock them up securely. Keep the ammunition separate unless you have the gun in your possession. Train with your gun in accuracy and retention. And don’t drink or do drugs if you have your gun available. Train your kids. I can sum it up in two words: be responsible.

And with that, I’m done.