Mass shootings only happen in the United States.
That’s what the anti-gunner tell us. The reason they bring that up is because we have fewer gun restrictions than pretty much every other nation on the planet. If we have fewer gun laws yet are the only place on Earth that has mass shootings, then clearly our lack of gun laws is the big problem.
Yet yesterday, a shooting took place in Ottawa, Canada. It claimed one life and three people were taken to the hospital after the shooting.
While that doesn’t really meet the definition most of us use, it does meet the one used by a number of other places, places held up by the media as authoritative.
Now, let’s keep in mind that Canada has some very restrictive gun control policies in place. If gun control were the blanket answer to gun violence, things like this simply wouldn’t be an issue in Canada.
It is, though. And it doesn’t just restrict itself to guns, either.
For the anti-gunner, this will undoubtedly lead them to believe that we in the United States need to “do something.” Then again, what doesn’t lead them to believe that about any given topic? Pollution in China, South America, and Africa are apparently our fault, so it’s not shocking they’d also blame us for another country’s gun violence issues.
The problem is, that’s the wrong takeaway.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want American guns going to Canada. I don’t want black market guns to exist at all, much less be transported across the borders.
I’m just not deluded enough to think there’s any way to actually stop it. We can step up enforcement and try to reduce those numbers, but they’re never going away.
No, the real takeaway here should be the fact that evil knows no nationality. Time and time again, we’ve seen mass killings take place in all parts of the world, regardless of the gun control in place. Eight kids killed in China, for example. Or the 28 people killed in another Chinese knife attack that left more than a hundred people injured. A terrorism-motivated mass shooting in Germany is another. So are the four people killed in an Australian shooting rampage. Or how about the shooting in Crimea which killed 20 innocent people?
This isn’t exactly an exhaustive list because doing so would be, well, exhaustive. I didn’t even touch on most of the terrorist attacked in Europe in recent years.
Evil people do evil things because, well, they’re evil. Some people like to argue that no one is truly evil, but I reject that notion completely. Yes, evil walks among us. You or I may know someone who is truly evil, only we don’t know it. More importantly, though, is that there are potentially millions of evil people out there, any of whom may be waiting for their chance to carry out some evil plan.
What evil doesn’t do, though, is confine itself to one set of borders.
So when something happens in Ottawa, it’s not our fault. It’s the fault of the evil SOB who thought taking innocent lives was a good thing to do. When it happens in Crimea, it’s not our fault. Nor is it our fault when terrorists open fire on crowds of people, nor is it our fault when a guy in a van kills ten people.
None of this is on us here in the United States. Evil simply is, and it’s our duty as decent people to confront it where possible.
Yet some would continue to claim every shooting anywhere is the fault of Americans like you and me, people who refuse to allow the left to trample on our gun rights. It’s not. That evil would exist if guns had never been invented. After all, why else in England having to impose knife control?
Frankly, I’m not about to roll over and accept responsibility for these things. We didn’t do it and would never stand for it.
Evil, however, knows no nationality.
