After his parents were cut down by a maniac in Highland Park, Illinois, Monday, 2-year-old Aiden McCarthy was found bloodied, lying under his father’s body. He was rescued and eventually delivered into the loving arms of his grandparents.
We do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but why didn’t mom and dad, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, teach their toddler to arm himself and stop the slaughter? Or why didn’t they keep their hands free to reach for a concealed firearm, Hollywood style, and take dead aim at the shooter? After all, we’re repeatedly told by the gun lobby that the only answer to bad guys with guns is good guys with guns.
Nothing explodes that dangerous myth better than seven people being murdered and nearly 50 wounded by a man perched on a rooftop, firing more than 70 rounds from a military-style rifle he obtained legally despite having told his family in 2019 he wanted to “kill everyone.” Statistics already confirm that the chances a gun owner will wield a weapon to defend himself in a crime is vanishingly small; the chances the same weapon will wind up hurting or killing a fellow good guy (or child), far larger.
But imagine dozens or, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling inventing individuals’ constitutional right to carry a concealed firearm in public, hundreds of good guys in the parade crowd when shots ring out. Imagine they unholster their weapons and scan the frantic stampede, seeking to determine the source of the firing. We now have scores of individuals in plain clothes pointing and perhaps discharging weapons at what they believe to be a bad guy.
This is a recipe for chaos, confusion and death.
Indeed, there were plenty of trained, uniformed good guys with guns — police officers — present when the killer unleashed hell. They couldn’t stop him from orphaning Aiden McCarthy. Neither would a crowd of self-styled action heroes. The only sane answer is to prevent would-be villains from getting killing machines in the first place.
