What the Tragic Shooting in Florida Tells Us about People.

With the tragic shooting in Florida fresh within our minds, there is little reason to dispute politicians’ employing the wanton murder of 17 of our friends and neighbors for personal gain – it always happens during crises such as this. Most of the discussion, legitimately or not, upon social media trends towards one of two topics: gun control or immigration. Neither have anything to do with the tragedy and the real culprit is never mentioned because, frankly, it remains too difficult to discuss, too, dare I say, politically incorrect to mention.

First, permit me to address both sides of the argument from empirical knowledge. In full disclosure, I remain an avid firearms enthusiast – both professionally and privately. I have owned dozens of firearms over the years, including most of today’s more “infamous” varieties: AR-15s (numerous variants), Kalashnikovs, semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, etc. etc. Furthermore, I bore a most colorful childhood designing and firing rocket launchers (“Bazookas” for the uninitiated) and various things best classified as improvised explosive devices. Nevertheless, in 54 years of such “militaristic” experimentation and training, I cannot ever claim to have taken – or thought about taking – an innocent human life. Nor have I ever tried to dehumanize the presence of another human being for effect. My past simply better prepared me for a professional career in corporate security.

Now, as for the immigration issue (which has little to do with the Florida shooting, but little did guns either). Both sets of my grandparents hailed from occupied Poland (maternal set from Austrian-occupied Poland and the paternal side from Russian-occupied Poland). I am, therefore, a product of immigration. Yet, my grandparents 1.) Came here legally, 2.) Wanted to be Americans, 3.) Found employment upon arrival to the United States (my grandfather was a coal miner and once was trapped for 18 hours before rescuers dug them out – attesting to my family’s desire to work hard), and 4.) Assimilated into the community, sharing American values, faith, and devotion as taxpaying citizens. In essence, my grandparents would never have considered adding anything termed “illegal” to his or her name; for to do so simply discredited their character, their new home, and their neighbors. Again, what happened the other day in Florida bore nothing to do with the illegal immigration question – a serious national security threat that needs to be examined by cooler heads.

Once we realize that neither guns nor immigration status (or citizenry for that matter) had anything to do with the shooting in Florida, we can dispense with the hysteria and political pandering undertaken by various sides seeking to profit from the tragedy. On the one side, AR-15s, generally, are neither “high-powered” nor are they “assault weapons”. Most are chambered with a relatively minor .22-caliber cartridge too inadequate for hunting anything larger than a squirrel. Unfortunately, humans are quite frail creatures. Furthermore, we cannot argue that even “high capacity” magazines are to blame. Personally, I fear more over a hostile individual carrying three clips of .45 ACP rounds than I do about one carrying ten magazines of 5.56mm/.223 ammunition, but I digress. Finally, any item used to assault someone is, indeed, a weapon. Ergo, all those trucks, cars, and vans that Islamic terrorists had been using to mow down pedestrians by the dozens are legitimate assault weapons. AR-15s are just the latest manifestation in mankind’s modernization of everything from cameras to cars to telephones.

What are we, therefore, left with when considering the tragic shooting in Florida? In a word: Evil. Our modern, let everyone do as he or she pleases culture has left us open to the greatest threat to human beings ever. And the oldest. Ever since the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel, people have sought to kill one another for any number of excuses – but all deal with, perhaps, the most original of Original Sins: total disregard for our Creator’s message to love one another as we love ourselves. And there is no better threat in favor of mass shootings, suicide bombings, and other terroristic events than for the perpetrator to hate human life so much as to not care what happens to him or her. In effect, people kill indiscriminately because they do not see others as equals. Even the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that self-defense is not immoral because we are bound to care for ourselves more than others should we have to kill to keep from being killed ourselves. It allows that the “grave duty” for self-preservation dismisses the notion to willingly die to keep from gravely injuring an attacker.

When I was growing up, I had two close friends. One was ridiculed by others because his parents were relatively poor and often considered to be “hillbillies”, predecessors to today’s “trailer trash”, “rednecks”, and even “white supremacists”. Yet, his parents were strict and preached Christian values. My other friend hailed from educated, liberal, and well-paid parents whose work remained largely that of diplomats. Because of the nature of his parents’ work, my friend spoke five languages fluently by the time that he was twelve. They would not be caught dead hanging around my first friend’s family, though we often spent nights at one another’s home. All three of us drifted apart about time that we reached high school and the chance encounters with my friends in latter years proved highly instructive. My first friend became a highly successful businessman with a large and loving family. Our childhood companion, however, fared miserably. By the time that he reached high school, he had developed into one of the neighborhood’s largest drug peddlers and his own use of the products he pitched left his face so horribly contorted that I could not recognize him when, five years previously, we were the best of friends.

So, what drove my friends to two diametrically opposed lifestyles despite one having all the “advantages” and the other struggling just to survive? Evil. Evil can lead seemingly prosperous people to do evil things. And, by “Evil”, I mean a specific person, individual, or creature. As tainted humans, we all do evil things from time to time, but when we fall victim to Evil – and you will note that I am avoiding using the names Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, etc. in the same manner that I refuse to acknowledge the name of Florida’s killer --, we allow ourselves to be duped by someone else whose goals for us are not within our best interests. Great Evil can come from the halls of Washington, our place of business, or, yes, within our treasured schools and religious facilities. And, friends, Evil is very deceptive, which is why blame almost always seems to run rampant.

Humans are creatures (having been created, after all), but we are not necessarily animals. Unlike moose, penguins, wildebeests, and humpbacks, we possess free will (often mischaracterized as freedom). Free will is ours, no one can take it away by torture, but we can willingly give it away for free. It largely depends upon how much value we bestow upon it. I, for one, will never harm an innocent soul because I, frankly, refuse to allow anyone to destroy my personal dignity. Which also explains why I am temporarily working for a major retailer rather than, say, a more appropriate corporate security establishment: I will not conduct myself within a manner that betrays my upbringing and faith. Others choose all sorts of ‘excuses’ to misbehave (consider Hollywood, for instance), preferring to blame other races, nationalities, and even their more successful neighbors for why his or her life turns out horrible. If you think that poor is rough, you ought to try being wealthy for a change, but again I digress.

For all the notoriety of firearms of late, the worst school massacre in U.S. history still took place back in 1927 when a disgruntled farmer took a pickup truck full of dynamite and rusty machinery parts to blow up 38 children in Bath, Michigan. As far as I know, nobody tried to outlaw farmers, pickups, or machinery parts. This is because the culprit could be identified as none other than Andrew Kehoe. Just because he was literally losing the family farm due to high school taxes was no reason to murder 38 kids and six adults. Evil influenced him to conduct an act of evil and obliterate the future of an entire community. The same holds true for Florida of 2018. Some people are just so, dare I say, possessed that they hold little concern for innocent human lives and it matters little whether they use explosives, guns, or knives – they will kill anything they get their hands on and with whatever means may be available (in 1927 America you could probably still buy machine guns out of a mail-order catalog, but Kehoe chose to blow up his truck instead). Like I said, raw, unadulterated Evil and until we come to terms with this we shall always be left scratching our heads over the latest massacre. And listen to politicians threaten our freedoms because others’ free will.

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? February 16, 2018, R.J. Godlewski. All Rights Reserved.