Amazing column in the liberal Washington Post

[richp]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/03/take-guns-off-dcs-streets-no-take-shooters-off-streets/

 

A stoutly liberal paper carries a piece like this from a reliably liberal columnist. Amazing he has started to get it.

 

But of course the DC numbers pale to be insignificance compared to Cook County and the streets of Chicago...

 

Rich Phillips

[mauserme]

Can you post some excerpts? I can't get past the paywall.

[Lou]

The crux of his article:

 

For goodness sake, call it what it is. Guns aren’t causing the pain and havoc that Bowser decries. There are shooters in the District of Columbia. Too many. Take guns off the streets? No, take shooters off the streets. If there is any debate about that, this city has lost.

 

[NRApistol]

For the umpteenth time: Guns don’t point themselves at people and pull their own triggers. Guns don’t go looking for someone to kill. They don’t sit around and plan murders.

In the Marshall Heights neighborhood where the shooting occurred, there have been eight homicides involving firearms this year. Guns didn’t sprout legs and take themselves there.

For goodness sake, call it what it is. Guns aren’t causing the pain and havoc that Bowser decries. There are shooters in the District of Columbia. Too many. Take guns off the streets? No, take shooters off the streets. If there is any debate about that, this city has lost.

[Euler]

Take guns off D.C.’s streets? No, take shooters off the streets.

 

Opinion by Colbert I. King

Columnist

2020-12-04T02:08:35.943Z

 

I am fully prepared to entertain the argument that the persons who fired the weapons Wednesday night in Southeast D.C., which struck a vehicle multiple times and killed 15-month-old Carmelo Duncan, strapped in a car seat next to his 8-year-old brother, were emerging adults - which is to mean youths, perhaps well into their 20s, who generally display greater risk-seeking behavior, who are susceptible to peers, stress and excitement, and who have a diminished capacity for self-control.

 

If you tell me, once we learn who they are, that because of their ages the shooters are less cognitively developed than full-grown adults, are more impulsive, less emotionally mature and less cognizant of the consequences of their actions, I won't argue. If you add that they aren't engaged in school or work, or that they struggle with mental health conditions or substance-abuse issues, or lack supportive relationships with family and other caring adults, and may often experience homelessness, I'll take your word for it.

 

And I will listen carefully should you wish to make the point that the shooters are developmentally and neurologically distinct from older adults, that their brains are continuing to develop, particularly in the prefrontal cortex region, which regulates impulse control and reasoning, among other things.

 

But, now, listen to me: I want them caught. I want them read their rights and immediately placed in a secure and restricted environment. I want them to be accorded all the rights and privileges pertaining to someone in detention. But I want them - for the sake of all the toddlers, parents and neighbors walking the streets or riding in cars or just trying to survive and get by - put as far away and for as long as the law will allow.

...

For the umpteenth time: Guns don't point themselves at people and pull their own triggers. Guns don't go looking for someone to kill. They don't sit around and plan murders.

 

In the Marshall Heights neighborhood where the shooting occurred, there have been eight homicides involving firearms this year. Guns didn't sprout legs and take themselves there.

 

For goodness sake, call it what it is. Guns aren't causing the pain and havoc that [Mayor Muriel] Bowser decries. There are shooters in the District of Columbia. Too many. Take guns off the streets? No, take shooters off the streets. If there is any debate about that, this city has lost.

[TriumphRider]

Nice article. I appreciate the honesty.

Personally, I think the government 'allows' a certain amount of crime to occur, and actually encourages it with the useless laws the gov't passes. High crime rates equate to more folks calling the gov't "Daddy", and fuels the belief that 'only the gov't can help me'.