Another shooting, another litany of the dead, and it is, of course, politicized before any motive is known. As I write this, there is no known reason Syed Rizwan Farook, Tashfeen Malik, and possibly a third person (many conflicting reports on that, so I’ll leave it as ‘possibly’) decided at some point to open fire at a holiday party for county employees. We just don’t know.
But that has not stopped the blame – from CAIR rushing to assure the public that ‘not all Muslims do this’, which is laughably obvious, even to the most anti-Islamic – to the crowd calling for more and more gun control. ISIS is, of course, a popularly speculated motive. Personal offense given at the party is getting short shrift, as there seems, at least at this time, to have been an unreasonable amount of planning involved. The specifics of the attack, tactical gear, pipe bombs, possible communications rigs, and an exfiltration plan, point to a serious amount of planning.
Do you know what the one, so far incontrovertible, truth is?
That Syed Rizwan Farook, Tashfeen Malik, and possibly a third person chose to do this.
They. Chose.
They chose to pull the trigger.
They chose to kill innocent civilians and coworkers.
They chose to leave at least one pipe bomb behind.
They chose to leave their 6 month old child behind to kill people who had, to all accounts, done them no harm, and had celebrated with them on the birth of said child.
They. Chose.
The NRA didn’t choose. The Koran didn’t choose. The volume of vile ignorance spewing from left and right didn’t choose. Rhetoric didn’t choose. Climate change didn’t choose. They chose.
There needs to be an awakening here – the shooters, in the end, chose to shoot. Why is there so much effort spent to demonize some other factor? Why can we not look at finding a way to move society to a place where violence of any stripe is not the response?
We have issues with responsibility, and issues with individuals acting as such. We, as humans, have to have some greater force to blame. From blaming the mob, CIA, FBI, KGB, BSA, and every other group for the Kennedy assassination to blaming climate change for Hitler, to blaming internet trolls for Congresswoman Gifford’s shooting, we have to blame someone.
With no motive, perhaps we should blame the shooters this time.