Other than the introducing the term “assault rifle” into popular parlance, the term “gun violence” is the gun control industry’s greatest linguistic accomplishment. On the face of it, why not? Violence with a gun or guns. Gun violence. Although gun grabbers cleverly expanded that term to include suicide by firearm, I can live with a narrow definition. It is what it is. Or is it? The above Tweet by Hartford Connecticut Mayor Pedro Segarra (re-Tweeted an internet eternity later by the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence) makes it seem as if the murders were committed by guns for guns, rather than by people with guns. It’s kinda important to see “gun violence” as a human tragedy. So let’s look at Pedro’s experience of a firearms-related fatality, via hartfordmag.com . . .
Segarra was born in Puerto Rico, on April 28, 1959, in Maricao. His grandparents were among the founders of that town, having fled a rebellion against the Spanish in the 1860s to resettle on Indian lands, where they grew coffee.
When he was nine months old, his biological father was killed – shot by a man who mistook the 19-year-old for his brother, with whom the gunman had a quarrel. A number of Pedro’s relatives had emigrated to New York, and when he was eight, his mother took her family and followed them, to the South Bronx.
No matter what you make of this murder, whose details are as sketchy as a caricaturist’s pad, the fact is that someone shot someone with a gun. If that someone hadn’t shot that someone—Hizzoner’s bio Dad—Pedro’s old man would still be alive. Unless that someone had killed his genetic parent in some other way. Just sayin’.