Toronto Shows Us Why We’ve Got to Look Deeper Than Guns

A motorist suspected of killing 10 people by driving a van down a sidewalk in Toronto is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

Canadian police have been looking for a motive behind Monday’s attack that also injured 15 others.

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders identified the suspect as 25-year old Alek Minassian and said he was from a Toronto suburb. Saunders said the attack “definitely looked deliberate.”

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said he consulted with senior security officials and that based on all available information “there would appear to be no national security connection to this particular incident.” [Source: Voice of America News]

In this latest incident, the weapon was a van, not a gun.

People who support gun control speak as if banning guns will not only keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but will end violence as we know it.

Such a position is convenient if your goal is to disarm the population because you want a Communist-like collectivist government to control everything we say, think and do. But such a position is also convenient if you don’t want to look at why we have more and more of such violence in the first place.

Civilized society is plainly less civilized than it used to be. Schools are no longer safe places. Movie theaters and restaurants are prime targets. Shopping malls are not safe, and sports stadiums are not immune, either. The Las Vegas Strip is open territory. Gay discos have been attacked as well as iconic locations in New York, London and Paris. The evidence is overwhelming.

We keep talking about how guns are the problem. But what are we to say when the violence doesn’t involve a gun? Death is death, whether you die from a bullet or you’re run over by a van. Why all the violence, truly senseless violence you expect in barbaric situations but not in anything remotely resembling civilization?

The questions are inconvenient because the people pushing for banning guns are the same people who peddle the notion that people commit violence because of economic inequality or poverty. But Western societies like Canada and the U.S. are wealthier than ever before. Unemployment is getting lower and the stock market is surging. Trillions are poured into “welfare” and wealth redistribution as never before, both in Canada and the United States. It can’t be poverty causing all of this. And it can’t be guns either, since Toronto’s attack didn’t involve a gun.

People commit random and senseless acts of violence for a lot of reasons, but a common one is the entitlement mentality.

Islamic terrorists feel entitled to live in a world where nobody disagrees with them.

Other types of terrorists — Antifa comes to mind — feel entitled to live in a world where governments and businesses do what they think is right…otherwise, off with your head.

Unprecedented numbers of young people continue to live with their parents into their late 20s and 30s, and demand socialist policies whereby their college, health insurance and retirement pensions are all paid for by others.

The entitlement mentality is everywhere. It’s now the norm, not the exception. The exceptions are truly heroic, but how did independence, self-respect, liberty and self-responsibility become abnormal?

No, the entitlement mentality doesn’t always result in violence. But in a culture where entitlement is on the rise, the mindset of criminals will be on the rise, too. Entitled criminals are at home in a world where most of the rest of society feels and thinks the same way.

That’s the inconvenient, objective truth that people who push for repeal of the Second Amendment don’t want us to realize. But ideas have consequences. Wrong, unhealthy and irrational ideas, once adopted by the mainstream, can bring down a civilization. If you wonder why civilization is in such obvious decline, you’ll have to look deeper than guns. Toronto is the latest reminder.

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