This is a fact.
But the guns were returned to him by his father, and four people were killed the other day in that Waffle House in
These, too, are facts.
President
Law-abiding gun owners of America didn't demand that the guns be returned to a man with obvious mental illness.
The killer's father,
He took possession of the guns from law enforcement. He knew that his son was sick, that he may well have been dangerous.
And yet he gave them back to his son.
Facts.
Yes, facts are stubborn things, aren't they?
Yet immediately after the Waffle House killings, the hot takes were launched in media, on Twitter, and the high priests of the left began attacking the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
It was Trump's fault and the
If you're a regular consumer of American news, you know this liturgy by heart. Do we really need another "town meeting" on national cable news to unleash the demagogues?
Using the Nashville Waffle House shooting in hot takes to shame Americans away from publicly supporting the Second Amendment must be extremely satisfying to some.
But it's about as logical as using the
When partisan politics meets fear and opportunity, the hot takes come rushing, and the herding of the mob commences and facts are pushed aside.
We've seen this before in the aftermath of other shootings, like the recent carnage at
The immediate cry was to gut the Bill of Rights in the name of "common sense" gun laws, and those who didn't join up were shamed.
Only later did facts come out.
An armed
The federal PROMISE program, brainchild of the Obama administration, was designed to allow schools to deal with disciplinary issues without notifying police.
The 19-year-old suspect, former student
Seventeen were killed, and he confessed pulling the trigger, authorities said.
But before the details were all known, the hot takes were already thrown.
Appeals to fear and rage aren't policy, but they are effective politics, especially in a culture that has been weaned away from understanding that our republic was designed to be slow and deliberate to protect the rights of the minority against the passions of the day.
Now we're fed a daily dose of policy by polls and pundits shouting on TV. Civics in schools is an afterthought.
Fear and rage are potent weapons. And there's nothing like pushing raw emotion and political tribal chant to herd people to policy, whether that be another war in the
Are there good and honestly outraged and frightened Americans who just want to put an end to these shootings? Yes, of course.
But fear and outrage also have political utility. And those techniques are used by political hacks with their eyes on the 2018 elections.
That is the way of hot takes. Then, a few hours pass, and the facts start coming out.
In
But his father gave them back to him.
In
According to news reports, a
That report mentions
And in
You want "common sense" gun laws? How about promoting Gun Violence Restraining Order bills in the states? A GVRO would allow family members living with a mentally ill person to seek a court order to temporarily seize their guns.
But in this case?
This one is not on law-abiding gun owners who safely keep weapons to defend themselves and their families, as is their right.
This one's on the father.
He gave those guns back to his son.
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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.