DANGEROUS REPUBLICANS
Paranoid Republicans Are Armed and Dangerous
More guns lead to more gun violence
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The Republican Party has been stoking fear as an excuse for insisting that their constituents must be armed. As a result, they’ve cultivated a population of suspicious, paranoid people who are increasingly dangerous to innocent, law-abiding citizens.
Kyle Rittenhouse is a perfect example. He crossed state lines to interfere with a Black Lives Matter protest. Why? Rittenhouse claimed he went there to act as a medic, but then why did he bring a gun?
An 84-year-old man in Kansas City, Missouri, shot 16-year-old Ralph Yarl for ringing his doorbell. The man said he was terrified, but by what? Yarl was there to pick up his brothers — he had no weapon, and he was on the other side of a locked door when he was shot.
A 21-year-old woman was murdered in the driveway of a man in a New York suburb for mistakenly driving down his driveway on her way to a friend’s home. His lawyer says he was frightened when two cars and a motorcycle drove toward his house — so he shot one of the drivers and killed her.
Paranoia and guns are not a good combination
These three examples have one thing in common: irrational fear of strangers — fear so intense that, in each case, these men chose to kill someone who presented no threat to them.
Rittenhouse would never have been in danger if he hadn’t brought a gun with him. His irrational fear of the people participating in the protest caused him to believe that if he didn’t shoot first, they would have taken his weapon from him and shot him with it. It was the weapon he brought with him that put him in danger.
When Ralph Yarl was shot (the first time), it was through a locked front door. He wasn’t attempting to break into the house. He just rang the doorbell. Still, he took a bullet to the head, and after the old man shot him once, he opened his door and shot Yarl again. If the homeowner had an AR-15, instead of a pistol, Yarl would not be alive today.
The 21-year-old woman shot in a driveway in New York was turning her car around to leave when she was shot and killed. What threat…
