After almost every mass shooting, someone wants to ask about when did politics matter more than lives. Their effort, of course, is to guilt pro-gun people into supporting gun control. They miss the fact that lives matter to us just as much, if not more, than they do to those asking the question. The difference is that we don’t believe that inhibiting the rights of law-abiding Americans will actually save lives.
Yet as Cam reported yesterday, 14 people were shot at a Chicago funeral home. Despite that, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s toughest words weren’t for the criminals who are turning Chicago into more of a warzone than it already was.
No, she lashed out at President Trump because federal officers are arresting people for attempting to destroy federal property.
Her city is falling apart and all she can do is scream how Trump and federal officers aren’t welcome in her city, despite the fact that they may be the most effective law enforcement option there at the moment.
For Lightfoot and other mayors in a similar position, they could reach out and ask President Trump for help. They could ask for federal resources or if those officers could help supplement their departments’ efforts.
If not that, then there are any number of other things they could do. They could do something productive. I won’t try and argue that the only options are the ones I laid out because that’s what they tend to do in the wake of a mass shooting and it annoys me then. I’m not saying what they have to do or what they should do, only they should do something productive.
Yet they won’t. They won’t because the bloodshed doesn’t actually bother them.
You see, Lightfoot knows that she can continue to blame Indiana for her violence problem. She’ll keep blaming another state, ask for more gun control by the state legislature, and pat herself on the back. She’ll do that because it doesn’t actually require her to put forth any real effort. She doesn’t have to get down to the nitty-gritty of trying to deal with violent crime.
She’d much rather lash out at President Trump at a time when 14 of her city’s residents were shot at a funeral home. This is a crime that, were it not for sheer luck would have made national headlines. Mass murder tends to grab the media’s attention, after all. It should be noted, though, that the shooting doesn’t seem to have a damn thing to do with Trump, so why lash out then?
Lightfoot simply doesn’t want people to recognize the fact that she doesn’t know what the hell to do.
Her already violent city has gotten worse. Other cities are also getting worse and their mayors don’t know what to do about it either. Yet she can’t admit that. Politicians can’t admit they don’t have the answers. So, she opted to deflect.
Yet the problem is, her deflection makes it clear that for her lives really do matter less than the politics of a situation.
