It doesn’t usually occur to us that our lives are in danger when all we are doing is examining a head of lettuce in the produce aisle. The breakdown in moral and ethical integrity is now so widespread that we apparently are not safe in a grocery store, a theater, a school, a church, a dance club, anywhere. Murderers could be upon us in moments.
A murderer in a grocery store cannot be considered the price of freedom. It cannot be considered the price of freedom to lose your son or daughter or the father of seven to a murderer who for some reason decides that a King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado, is where he will act out his frustrations with life.
To suggest — and I have heard it suggested — that getting gunned down by a lunatic is the price we pay for freedom conflates acceptable risk with intentional murder.
Off you go to King Soopers, let’s say on foot. You accept, however innately, risk. You could trip on a curb and break your leg. You could be hit by a car. A streetlight could fall on your head. But you make it safely and as you enter the store so does Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, who raises a Ruger AR-556 pistol —it resembles a rifle, but with a shorter stock —and kills you instantly. That isn’t a risk you take. That is intentional murder.
Yes, risk is the very soul of our existence. Somebody recently wrote that in this very newspaper. And our ownership of risk has been challenged as we have tried to dodge the coronavirus. Government agents have decided our level of risk. We have to wear masks and stand 6 feet apart. We faced the lockdown of businesses. And we don’t like it. It goes against our grain to be told what to do. We balk, but we also sort it out and come to reasonable conclusions about our health and safety and the health and safety of others.
We come around, most principally because with our freedom comes responsibility. Mass murderers, and just as important, the people around them, a family, too often shun the responsibility component of the freedom equation. Aliwi’s family, for example, reportedly saw him fooling around in the house with the newly purchased gun. They knew him to be troubled, sullen and quick to anger. It was reported that he had been booted from his high school wrestling team after threatening to kill his teammates. They knew all this, according to reports, and yet they apparently did nothing. They apparently did not confront him or call the police or take the gun outside and smash it to bits.
Well, as the anticipated new round of additional gun control measures are brought forward, we will hear that the Boulder mass murder could have been prevented if Aliwi Alissa didn’t have that particular gun. He could have killed 10 people with any number of weapons, including a baseball bat.
But that mass killing could have been prevented if the shooter’s family had intervened, fulfilling the responsibility half of the freedom equation.
Your son had a troubled high school experience to the point where he was reported to have threatened to kill his wrestling teammates. You know him to be sullen and quick to anger. At 22 he is apparently still living under your roof. One day he brings home a gun that looks more menacing than most.
Do you take matters into your own hands or do you wait for the government to pass more laws?
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March 27, 2021 at 11:27PM
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Soucheray: The freedom equation includes risk — and responsibility - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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