“[Chicago 14th District Republican Committee Chairwoman Janine] Kateff said if America did ban the AR15 rifle, the gun used in many school massacres, that wouldn’t stop somebody from coming in with a machete, a knife, an explosive — and, she said, ‘Where would it end?'” columnist Rochelle Riley (above) writes at freep.com . . .
And that’s where Kateff ran off the rails. No trucks or machetes or explosives have been used in mass school shootings — and I hope these kinds of responses don’t give anyone ideas.
Hang on. Let’s Google “school bombing.”
Click on the image to get to the Wikipedia page for the live links. And note that the Columbine massacre was a bomb plot that didn’t go off as planned (thank God).
OK, now that we know such a thing as a school bombing exists, let’s Google “worst school bombing”.
First link: Wikipedia’s Bath School disaster. Which provides the following information:
The Bath School disaster, sometimes known as the Bath School massacre, was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, which killed 38 elementary schoolchildren and six adults and injured at least 58 other people.
Kehoe killed his wife and firebombed his farm, then detonated an explosion in the Bath Consolidated School before committing suicide by detonating a final device in his truck.
In fact, the Bath School massacre is the worst school homicide in U.S. history. And it was a bombing. In a state not very far from Illinois, in fact.
Yes, facts . . .
IMHO it’s not unreasonable to expect a professional columnist to research some basic facts before sneering at a gun rights advocate’s assertion that banning AR’s would not stop crazies and terrorists from attacking schools using other methods.
Which leaves us with two possible conclusions . . .
Either anti-gun rights journalists and columnists like Ms. Riley are too lazy to spend .4 seconds Googling for facts, or they refuse to do so out of willful ignorance. Knowing — on some level — that their position will not withstand rational analysis.
No matter how you slice it, one thing’s clear: gun control agitprop providers aren’t the most admirable people. Just sayin’ . . .