Vice President Kamala Harris has been appointed as the Democratic nominee, pretty much. She still hasn't won a presidential primary ever, but she's still going to be the nominee. And while she's trying to walk back some of her more extreme anti-gun views, she's also not a fan of the Second Amendment.
That was clear as she blamed guns, among other things, for the El Paso shooting during the fifth anniversary of that horrible day.
Of course, nothing about that is shocking, but let's take a moment and look at her comments.
Vice President Kamala Harris marked the fifth anniversary of the tragic mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which targeted Latinos, by honoring the 23 lives lost and the resilience of the survivors and the community.
“Five years ago, white supremacy fueled a tragic mass shooting targeting Latinos in El Paso. Today and every day, we honor with action the 23 lives cut short, the survivors, and the resilience of the El Paso community,” Harris stated.
She called on Congress to pass commonsense gun safety laws and urged collective action to end the epidemic of gun violence and hate in the country.
The mass shooting occurred on August 3, 2019, at a Walmart in El Paso. The gunman, [killer's name redacted], killed 23 people and injured 22 others. The FBI investigated the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime, describing it as the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history.
[He] surrendered, was charged with capital murder, and posted a manifesto with white nationalist and anti-immigrant themes on 8chan before the attack. Inspired by the Christchurch mosque shootings and the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, Crusius pleaded guilty to 90 federal murder and hate crime charges on February 8, 2023. He was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences on July 7, 2023, but still faces potential state charges that could result in the death penalty under Texas law.
Of course, Harris and the media generally fail to note that the killer was a bit more complicated than just a white supremacist. He believed that illegal immigration was creating an ecological issue and that it needed to be dealt with to prevent an environmental catastrophe.
Now, was there hate fueling that attack? Oh, absolutely, but so was environmental alarmism, which never seems to get any attention. I wonder why that is?
Regardless, gun control wouldn't have prevented what happened that day. The killer had no criminal record at the time of the attack, which means he could pass any background check you want to name and did. While he had some pronounced mental issues, there had been no attempt to have him adjudicated as mentally incapable of exercising his Second Amendment rights. If that had taken place, he would have been lawfully barred from having a firearm.
Banning so-called assault weapons wouldn't have done anything, either. He could have just used a handgun. His preferred targets--he termed them "Mexicans" but he really means illegal immigrants--were people who couldn't lawfully own a firearm. Gun control effectively made the people he wanted dead into sitting ducks for his homicidal rage.
Gun control isn't the answer.
As for white supremacy, well...let's understand that I have absolutely no use for racists of any stripe. To judge people based on their heritage and ethnicity goes against core beliefs. Yet you're also never going to get rid of it, especially as so many politicians on the left push their own brand of racism and pretend theirs is a more just form. People on the outside of such efforts are going to take exceptions and, sooner or later, you get something like El Paso out of terrified rage if nothing else.
Maybe everyone needs to take some of this stuff down a notch or 12.
It might not stop the next mass murder, but it'll at least make the time more bearable.
