Taking Your Shot

 The media is referring to the young man who shot up his high school last week as the "Radicalized Evergreen Shooter." 

The suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk will have his social media connections scoured to determine his affiliations, but I suspect that he will also be labeled as "Radicalized" but by different schools of thought than his brothers in arms in Evergreen. 

The owner of a pawn shop in Oakland who shot and killed two of the five men who tried to rob his store will probably not be labeled in the same category as those other gentlemen. 

As an elementary school teacher, suddenly my mind fills with Venn diagrams. Where do these men's lives intersect? How were they different. Obviously, the intersection for all three is their capacity to take a life with a gun. Two of them used handguns. One of them used a rifle. Two of them were under thirty when they killed. One of them was older. One could be argued that he fired back in self defense. The other two were shooting unarmed victims. 

But the intersection of those three circles is still the same: Killer. Much will be made over the coming weeks and months of the varying political and social views of at least two of these shooters. Pawn shop owner in Oakland? I'm just going to posit a guess that he's a supporter of the Second Amendment but given the geography he might be voting blue. The kid in Evergreen ended his shooting match with a shot through his own head, so we'll be left with his  posts and links to give us a fuller picture of why someone would show up at their high school ready to kill. If the suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk lives long enough to stand trial, then there may be more opportunities to learn about what makes a killer do that thing that they do. 

He was a loner. Kept to himself. We never would have suspected him. Did they own a gun? That might be a great place to start. Not many of these stories start with "I really wanted to kill somebody, and as luck would have it, there was one just laying around in the street." Putting guns in the hands of people who have a will to use them is the gateway to a world of hurt. Charlie Kirk believed that this was the "price we pay" for living in a country with the Right To Bear Arms ensconced in the Bill of Rights. Going to school, running a business, or having a freewheeling discussion on a college campus are not constitutionally protected. This is the challenge, since some of these things like Free Speech and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness don't get the kind of buildup that the tools for killing get. 

Now that people seem to be taking shots at conservatives, it could be that things might change. The object of Charlie Kirk's adoration spent his visit to the Yankees game behind a very solid sheet of bulletproof glass. Wouldn't it be a nice place to live where bulletproof glass became obsolete?