So liberals say mass killings didn’t happen until “assault rifles” became available. Wrong!
In July, 1966, Richard Speck killed eight nursing students in a Chicago townhouse. No assault rifle used.
The next month, on August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman killed 14 people and wounded 31 others. He had an M1 carbine (hardly an “assault rifle”), a bolt action hunting rifle, a sawed off shotgun, several pistols and a machete. Considering that most of his shots were well over 100 yards and as far as 500 yards, the bolt action rifle was likely the only gun used. Holed up in the observation deck of the University of Texas Austin tower, he took fire from police and civilians, and was eventually killed when two police officers and a civilian stormed the tower.
Both killers were found to be suffering from severe mental illness — in the Texas case the shooter had a brain tumor that caused his mental state to go haywire.
Mass killings have been occurring since the 1800s, and in fact were fairly common at that time. No “assault rifles.” Just sick individuals bent on harming others. No politics. No blaming anyone but the shooter.
What’s different now is that we feel the need to justify everything, or to identify a neat, tidy root cause. We have forgotten that evil happens. There always have been and always will be sick, evil individuals who defy simple explanations or classification.
Unfortunately, too many people have chosen to use these horrendous acts for personal gain, and to literally make money. The DNC sent out a fundraising letter the day after the most recent shootings at El Paso and Dayton.
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, evil is as evil does.
Ray Baltes
