There is nothing as repulsively but thoroughly American as a deadly mass shooting with a high-powered rifle at a joyous parade celebrating the nation’s independence.
The Fourth of July shooter in the suburban Illinois city of Highland Park, north of Chicago, picked off what at last count were more than 50 people, killing at least seven. He reportedly did it with a lawfully purchased AR-15-style weapon, the kind of gun a federal judge in California a year ago described approvingly as “a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment,” in much the same way as a Swiss army knife is good “for both home and battle.” The judge’s ruling was, thankfully, overturned by an appeals court.
It is a fact that the U.S. is armed for battle and that the homeland is threatened, but the assailant is neither an abusive king nor a foreign enemy. Americans have taken up weapons of war against their neighbors. We have become our most deadly enemies, turning our own Constitution — or rather, particular interpretations of it — into a weapon to undermine the very things it was meant to protect, including (in the words of the 2nd Amendment) the security of a free state.
