The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attack on the Dallas ICE facility, and probably the attack at a Michigan LDS church are all acts that are motivated by politics. They're political violence, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. They weren't even the first we've seen recently.
And we would do well to remember that as we go forward. These attacks have a clear motive, and it's not predicated on literally anything else but the desire to shut down people who have the wrong opinions and are expressing them.
From two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump to this latest potentially politically motivated attack, there's a sickness going on among the American left, and it's just a matter of time before something has to break.
But it seems that at least one advocate of the "public health approach" to so-called gun violence doesn't think these are really what we say they are.
Many people in the public health world call this an epidemic. They use the tools of public health to study gun and other violence and have shown how violence spreads from person to person and community to community, as if it were carried from person to person like a virus or bacteria, as if violence were an infectious disease.
Still others want to call some of what is happening political violence, as if one party had declared war on the other party and were using murder to advance their political position.
But both views miss the point. Virus and bacteria spread from person to person on their own, without a human being choosing to hurt another human being, without anyone sighting down a barrel or aiming a gun. And though too many people in political life have been murdered, particularly in the last year, these murders have been committed by “lone wolves”, usually disaffected young people who spend too much time on the internet. These murders are murders of politicians, not political murder itself, which we have thus far thankfully avoided. Thus far.
Nice straw man in that first paragraph, don't you think?
Literally no one thinks there's been a formal declaration of war by the Democratic Party on anyone who is to the left of Mao. We know these aren't formal military-like actions by an ideological group that directed specific individuals to take specific actions.
But to downplay what we're seeing as if it's not political violence, all in an effort to lump these in and justify his position, shows that the author, Dr. Michael Fine, is so wrapped up in his own little universe that he can't see the reality.
I'm assuming he's on the same "side" as the killers here, politically speaking, and would rather distance himself from these attacks in some manner. I can totally understand that. I'd want nothing at all to do with these people either.
However, I find it very troubling that rather than just acknowledging these attacks are what they are, he tries to deflect them to pretend it's literally anything other than the left having demonized everyone they disagreed with for so long that some are taking them at their word and acting accordingly. They're murdering people for having the wrong opinions.
The so-called public health approach to violent crime has some degree of merit, just so long as they step away from gun control for a change. There's a lot that happens that we can utilize some of their ideas effectively to stop the retaliatory actions that lead to more death and mayhem.
But they're not exactly going to convince anyone on this side of the debate by also pretending the left trying to kill everyone who doesn't bend the knee to them isn't really what's happening here.
