What is the difference between ten people killed in Toronto, allegedly by a nut behind the wheel of a van and four people killed in Nashville, allegedly by a disturbed man wielding a semi-auto rifle?
For those on the political left, the Toronto victims fell to a deranged individual, while in Nashville, the four Waffle House shooting victims died from “gun violence.” It is not clear if the ten Canadians are any less dead than the four Tennessee victims, but Nashville Mayor David Briley, a Democrat, almost immediately called for stricter gun control laws.
Toronto police have suspect Alek Minassian in custody. Images of the battered rental van are all over the media.
Nashville police have suspect Travis Reinking in custody, and images of his AR-15 – the one Illinois police had seized, and then returned to his father, who appears to have returned that gun and three others to his son despite assurances to the contrary – have also been circulated.
The van is no less a “murder weapon” than the rifle.
There are reports that the Canadian suspect may have posted a message on Facebook that alluded to “Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger.” He was the sex deprived 22-year-old who murdered six people in Isla Vista, California four years ago.
To illustrate the media’s complicity in perpetuating an anti-gun narrative, a CBC headline at the time declared, “California shootings: Elliot Rodger confirmed as suspected gunman,” when he had clearly stabbed three of his victims and shot the other three.
Toronto isn’t the first time someone has used a vehicle for mass killing. There was Nice, France where more than 80 people were killed. Last year in New York, a man driving a rented pickup ran down people on a Big Apple bicycle path. There was the 2016 attack at Ohio State University, in which Abdul Razak Ali Artan rammed a car into a crowd, then got out and began slashing at them before he was fatally shot by a university police officer.
Yet in all of these incidents, nobody has recommended tighter restrictions on motorists. But let one individual open fire with a gun, and every gun owner in the United States is targeted for restrictions on their Second Amendment rights.
By focusing on guns after incidents such as Nashville, or a high school in Florida, the political left – in the eyes of gun rights activists – repeatedly reveals itself as more interested in eliminating guns than preventing crimes. It also appears that anti-gunners are oblivious to the notion that people intent on committing mayhem will find a means to their end, and gun control isn’t going to even slow them down.
