Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were both gunned down in their homes. The assassin--he's not just a killer, after all--targeted her specifically because of her political views. He also attacked another state lawmaker.
And the Minnesota Star Tribune sees it as not so much a tragedy as an opportunity.
See, she was shot...and she was a gun control advocate, which apparently has some special meaning, and they got to work pushing that agenda.
Melissa Hortman — who along with her husband, Mark, was shot and killed Saturday by an armed intruder — spent her legislative career trying to make Minnesota safer. Both as a member of the Legislature and speaker of the House, Hortman was a persistent advocate for stronger gun laws, not in the abstract but as a direct response to the toll of gun violence in communities across the state.
We know this well because Hortman occasionally amplified her voice in the Opinion pages of the Minnesota Star Tribune.
She pressed for background checks on all gun sales. She championed red flag laws to temporarily remove guns from people deemed dangerous. She sought new restrictions on firearm modifications and increased penalties for illegal gun purchases.
And she got results: Under her leadership, Minnesota passed some of its most significant gun-safety laws in a generation.
But on Saturday, the kind of tragedy she spent years working to prevent struck in her own home. The Hortmans were killed in what state and federal authorities have labeled an assassination. We don’t know all the details, but another Minnesota legislative family that was targeted in the same manner only half an hour earlier but survived — Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette — were hit by nine and eight bullets, respectively, according to Yvette.
Of course, they continue on to note all of the things she wanted to do and was working toward, because she was fighting what the board clearly believes to be the good fight.
However, let's also note a few things about all of those efforts they're celebrating, namely, how they didn't save her life in the least.
I know that may sound harsh or cruel, but while I'm more than willing to let sleeping dogs lie and allow Hortman's legacy to be whatever it was, the editorial board decided to use that legacy to take shots at something that's my turf. I cannot just turn the other cheek and pretend nothing happened.
Hortman wanted gun control. She got plenty of it, as Minnesota isn't exactly a pro-gun state. While it's not as extensive as elsewhere, the gun control scheme in place is far more than I'd ever tolerate.
And it did nothing to stop her assassination.
What they did manage to do, though, was make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise their right to keep and bear arms. They weren't enough to stop an assassin, but they might have deterred good, decent people from getting a gun and being murdered because of it.
I have sympathy for Hortman's surviving family. What happened to her and her husband should never happen in our country. That's not how we do business. The fact that the gunman had a hit list of over 45 different names and had already tried to kill another lawmaker that same day tells you a lot about this guy, none of it good.
But not only did existing gun laws fail to stop him, the proposals the editorial board mentions wouldn't have stopped him, either.
It's disgusting to try to use a tragedy to advance an agenda, but we should be used to it by now. The gun control side has never felt the least bit of remorse in using the bodies of the slain as a soapbox, nor have they been less than eager to attack anyone on our side who dares to do the same.
