Before any motive was or could have been known in the San Bernardino attack last week, a critical mass of Democrats had convinced themselves that they knew precisely the perpetrator’s identity and motive. He was certainly male, probably white; an extremist conservative who had consumed too much National Rifle Association propaganda. When the perpetrators, plural, turned out to be none of those things, you would think that the left would impose on itself some restraint. When it was discovered that the attack was executed by two people who fit no profile other than that of radicalized Islamic terrorists, you might presume that Democrats would critically examine what led them to their shared expression of prejudice. Not only has none of that occurred, Democrats now are indulging in a collective nervous breakdown.
There’s no other way to describe the mass emotive outpouring on the left over the existence of a civilian right to firearm ownership in this country. It is a communal spasm of angst matched only by the rigorous refusal to acknowledge the California killers’ murderous ideology, one that happens to be claiming hundreds of lives amid an ongoing war on the West.
The purest expression of adolescent torment over American gun laws has been that which is ongoing over at the New York Times. Before the bodies in San Bernardino had cooled, the Times editorial board engaged in a familiar grim ritual. As has become its habit, the Times opinion writers lamented the frequency with which they feel compelled to castigate the American people for jealously guarding their freedoms in the Bill of Rights. Before the facts were known, the Times joined the president in declaring the California attack a likely preventable massacre, but only if Republicans would embrace “common sense” gun ownership reforms.
Rather than perform about-face when it was revealed that the killers were inspired by the Islamic State and had constructed dozens of improvised explosive devices, the Times not only forged ahead with its activism but determined to express even more antipathy for law-abiding citizens.
The Times isn’t alone in going completely off the deep end since it was revealed by the FBI that what took place in California was an act of radical Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil.