“Police say the man was looking for his son when someone threw a lit firework near him,” chicago.cbslocal.com reports. “When he tried to find out who threw it, he was attacked and suffered a concussion . . . A crowd reportedly gathered around the man and began verbally assaulting him before the physical altercation began, police said.” Well that’s putting it mildly. According to other reports, some 200 teenagers cheered on the attackers as they brutally beat their 48-year-old victim. You can hear the mob baying for blood in the video above. If an unnamed teen hadn’t stepped in to stop the beat down, chances are the father would have been killed. And here’s the thing . . .
In a world where people fear only the police, and not each other, this kind of “mob justice” can and does erupt. It happened to the Jews during Kristallnacht. It happened to African-Americans lynched by racists. It happened to passers-by during the LA riots. And it happened in Illinois at Hinkley Park.
The common theme: the victims were disarmed. Literally. Not to put too fine a point on it, an armed society is a polite society. A disarmed society is, well, there it is. That’s not the America I love. You?