Politicize it

Last Tuesday, we learned an illegal alien was responsible for the murder of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts. The revelation that Christhian Rivera, a Mexican national who apparently used false identification to obtain work in the Iowa town near which he committed the crime, had stalked and stabbed her to death, threw a spotlight back on the illegal immigration crisis plaguing America. While conservatives pointed to the increasingly obvious need for stricter controls, liberals hammered conservatives for politicizing a tragedy.

Flash forward five days, and a psycho opened fire on a video gaming tournament. And all of a sudden, the liberal ban on politicizing tragedy had been radically amended. Well before anyone knew the killer’s name, much less the victims’ circumstances, all the cool anti-liberty kids, most of whom support unfettered illegal immigration, were racing to be first to politicize the hell out Jacksonville like a bunch of fat kids trying to squeeze through the same door.

I say we should be politicizing both, because both are politically sensitive issues, and shying away from politically sensitive issues guarantees only that they’ll never be healed. But it’s worth noting that examining the politics of both of these — along with many other violence-related issues — isn’t going to work out the way the left think it will.

In the case of Mollie Tibbetts, there can be no doubt that the liberals’ active — and often legislative — efforts to protect illegal aliens from justice led directly to her murder. The refusal of Democrats to allow ICE to their jobs might as well have put the knife in Rivera’s hand. As leftists were demanding — often violently — that we “abolish ICE,” Rivera was killing Mollie Tibbetts. As celebrities staged their photo-ops at detention centers for illegal aliens, another illegal alien was killing Mollie Tibbetts. As Democrat politicians were patting themselves on their backs for standing firm on “sanctuary cities,” a beneficiary of lax immigration enforcement was killing Mollie Tibbetts.

In the case of the Jacksonville shootings, there can be no case made to implicate the NRA, the GOP or gun owners in the crime. The NRA doesn’t support people like David Katz. In fact, the NRA has repeatedly called for policies and programs which make it harder for people David Katz to succeed. They certainly don’t endorse the idea of letting people who represent a threat to others wander free, unconcerned with an armed response in a “gun-free” zone. Besides, disarming a guy in Alaska isn’t going to prevent a shooting in Florida. It will raise the odds of a shooting in Alaska. And disarming guys in Florida isn’t likely to stop the homicidal rage of someone who thinks murder is an appropriate way to deal with losing a bloody video game.

We should absolutely politicize what happened in Jacksonville. We should examine the politics of blaming the wrong people for crime. We should discuss the fact that anti-gun laws deter criminals and crazy people about as effectively as “gun-free zone” signs. We should delve into the demonstrable drop in gun-related crime which has coincided with the relaxation of anti-gun laws and rise in civilian firearm ownership.  We should dig deep into the statistical correlation between higher — even epidemic — levels of gun related crime in cities which boast more stringent anti-gun laws.

And we should do the same for Mollie Tibbets, Kate Steinle and the endless list of victims of illegal alien violence. When is CNN going to present a town hall on illegal aliens like the one they devoted to Parkland? Where are the fawning magazine cover stories dedicated to the victims and the survivors who have dedicated their time and lives to bringing awareness to the plague of illegal aliens? Where are the hordes of protesters demanding justice for the dozens of people murdered in gun-free utopias like Chicago? Where is The New York Times exposé on the horrors of the Islamofascist compound in New Mexico and the inextricable linkage between radical Islam and violence? Politicize that.

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