I ask the Second Amendment absolutists of every political stripe, “Why did this letter have to be written?”
Seven months ago, on June 20, the Monitor published my letter calling out thoughts and prayers as “worthless currency.” Now more of that worthless currency is being freely dispensed to Kentucky’s Marshall County High School shooting victims. A 15-year-old student with killing on his mind succeeded in murdering two fellow students and came up short with 18 others who were wounded – and whose lives will never be the same.
We all know what followed immediately in the aftermath. A chorus of thoughts and prayers led by chorister-in-chief Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Two more young lives snuffed out on the altar of the right to keep and bear arms. More injured bodies and devastated families who have become nothing more than an unavoidable byproduct, collateral damage.
Republican leaders pre-blame sanctuary cities for imagined future murders by undocumented immigrants. Who will accept responsibility for actual murders committed with real guns, guns that never should have made their way into killers’ hands? President Trump? Attorney General Sessions? Sen. McConnell? Wayne LaPierre? A popular movement of conservatives and libertarians? Who will? Nobody will, as long as they can buy off their guilt with more worthless currency of thoughts and prayers.
WILLIAM POLITT
Weare