There are evil people in this world. There’s no way around that simple, unassailable fact. There are people out there that thrive on hate and discontent, who want nothing more than to kill everyone who is different than them.

Racism and anti-Semitism is a real problem, one made all the worse by the staggering number of hoax “hate crimes” that we encounter on a regular basis. In fact, most of these supposed acts have turned out to be hoaxes, which makes it difficult to believe that there really is an issue.

One attack that federal investigators allegedly stopped, however, was no hoax by any stretch.

FBI officials said they have arrested a 27-year-old suspected white supremacist who was allegedly planning a bombing at a Colorado synagogue.

The suspect, identified as Richard Holzer, was allegedly planning to target Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, which is the state’s second-oldest synagogue, the FBI said Monday. Holzer is charged with attempting to obstruct religious exercise by force using explosives and fire.

He allegedly told an undercover FBI agent that he hoped to poison members of the synagogue and claimed he had paid off a “Mexican cook to hex and poison” attendees by putting arsenic in the water pipes, according to an arrest affidavit.

…

Court documents say Holzer first suggested the idea to attack the synagogue with Molotov cocktails, but later decided he’d need something stronger. The agents told Holzer they could obtain pipe bombs and dynamite from out of state. On Oct. 31, he told the undercover agents he planned to go through with the attack on Nov. 1. According to the affidavit, Holzer “said that he wanted to put the Synagogue on the ground and demolish it.”

On Nov. 1, Holzer met three undercover FBI agents at a hotel. They showed him pipe bombs and dynamite. That is when he was arrested, at which point Holzer allegedly waived his Miranda rights and confessed.

Note, however, that at no point did Holzer appear to mention firearms.

In other words, he planned this attack without any intention of it being some kind of mass shooting. He wanted to use a bomb.

The takeaway here is that bad people will seek out ways to do bad things. In this case, it was someone who wanted to bomb a synagogue. I’m thankful that he found the FBI rather than someone who would provide him with a real bomb. I’m also thankful that he saw that as the path of least resistance rather than looking up homemade explosives, something that’s certainly easy enough to do in the modern age of the internet.

What he didn’t have to do was go through criminal background checks or any of the other rigamarole we’re told prevents bad people from acquiring weapons. Well, it sure looks like Holzer was a bad person and he came damn close to not just acquiring a weapon or two but also using them to kill as many people as possible.

This is horrific, made a bit more personal by a friend of mine having worshipped at the synagogue in question when she lived in Pueblo.

Bad people will still try to do bad things to good people even if they don’t have guns. It’s time some people started to understand that.