Pat Buchanan points out what many are asking: How did “the system,” for which we taxpayers pay such a high price, fail so utterly in preventing Nikolas Cruz from slaughtering 17 people at the high school from which he had been expelled? But is Cruz “evil”? Should he be quickly put to death, as Buchanan suggests, which would mean Florida taxpayers would not have to foot the bill to house Cruz for as long as he lives? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
By Patrick J. Buchanan
In days gone by, a massacre of students like the atrocity at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School would have brought us together. But like so many atrocities before it, this mass murder is tearing us apart.
The perpetrator, the sick and evil 19-year-old who killed 17 innocents with a gun, is said to be contrite.
Having confessed, he faces life in prison. For the next half-century, Nikolas Cruz will be fed, clothed, sheltered, and medicated at the expense of Florida taxpayers, including the families of those he murdered.
Cruz’s punishment seems neither commensurate with his crimes nor a deterrent for sick and evil minds contemplating another Columbine.
It didn’t use to be this way.
On Feb 15, 1933, anarchist Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate President-elect Franklin Roosevelt in Miami. His arm jostled, he killed instead Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Five weeks later, on March 20, 1933, Zangara died in the electric chair.
Swift, sure and pitiless, but that legal justice system worked.
With Cruz, the system failed up and down the line.
Cruz should never have been allowed to purchase or possess a gun. He was angry, alienated, isolated. Police had been to his family home to deal with complaints 39 times.
Yet he had no arrest record when he purchased his AR-15.
Classmates at Douglas High had speculated that if there ever were a school shooting, Cruz would be the one to do it. The FBI was alerted a month before that Nikolas Cruz was a time bomb ready to explode.
The NRA was not responsible for the system-wide failure from Douglas High to the FBI. As the NRA’s Dana Loesch told CPAC Thursday:
“The government can’t keep you safe and some people want us to give up our firearms and rely solely upon the protection of the same government that’s already failed numerous times to keep us safe.”
As for the AR-15, it is the most popular rifle sold. Five million to 8 million are in circulation. Veterans since Vietnam have trained with, and many fought with, the M16, which is first cousin to the AR-15. Veterans are among the millions who own them.
While all agree AR-15s should be kept out of the hands of crazies like Cruz, the establishment insists that it is the gun that is the problem.
We hear demands that AR-15s be banned and confiscated.
Proponents should put that proposition to a vote. But a prediction: The moment it is brought up for a vote, sales of AR-15s will explode, as they have before. If the weapon is banned, as alcohol was banned in Prohibition, millions of law-abiding Americans will become law-breakers.
And who will barge into America’s homes to seize and collect the rifles?
Moreover, if people have decided to mass murder classmates or co-workers, inviting “suicide by cop,” are they going to be stopped from acquiring a semiautomatic by a congressional law?
Have our drug laws halted drug use?
Many of the guns confiscated by police are in the possession of thugs, criminals, and ex-cons who have no legal right to own them. Yet, if we are going to prosecute the illegal sale or transfer of weapons severely, we will have hundreds of thousands more in prisons, at a time when we are instructed to empty them of nonviolent offenders.
As for mental illness, it seems more prevalent than it used to be, and the numbers of those on medication seems a greater share of the population.
Do doctors decide which of their patients are fit to own a gun, and which are not? Should doctors be held criminally liable if they fail to alert police and one of their patients uses a gun in a violent crime?
Who will maintain the federal registry of the mentally sick unfit to own a firearm?
The anger and anguish of those who lost family or friends in this atrocity is understandable. But passion is not a substitute for thought.
There are twice as many guns in America as there were just decades ago. And a primary reason people acquire them is because they believe they need them to protect themselves and their families, and they no longer trust the government to protect them.
They view the demand for banning and confiscating specific weapons as a first step down the inexorable road that ends in the disarmament of the people.
Most mass shootings take place in gun-free zones, where crazed men of murderous intent know their chances of maximizing the dead and wounded are far better than in attacking a police station.
Our embassies are defended by Marines with M16s. Security guards with guns defend banks and military bases, presidents, and politicians.
The best way to protect kids in schools may be to protect schools, and run down and incarcerate the known criminals and crazies who are the primary threats.
Pat Buchanan is a writer, political commentator and presidential candidate. He is the author of a new book, Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever and previous titles including The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority. Both are available from the AFP Online Store.
COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COM
It is time to vote out treasonous legislators who violate their oath of office. Innocent law-abiding citizens had nothing to do with the transgressions and they should not have their sacred second amendment infringed on . Our legislators are shaking in their boots before a mob of screaming spoiled brats financed by the leftists who are working for the destruction of the republic. Do they think the people who built this country waited till they were 22 to use and own guns? How do they expect to get any guys to join the military if they teach them that guns are a no-n0 and are off limits to them. This whole episode was clearly caused by the authorities who allowed a felonious off balance individual to run loose and possess guns. The legislators should all say no to any infringement to the second amendment .. We already have more laws than ever before in history that they do not apply to criminals but to decent citizens. Vote them out if they buckle to the bolsheviks!!!!
As I stated on another website(and it was removed), give me a camera crew, the 50yd. line of the football field, a set of shackles, my pocket knife and 48-72 hours.
The next school shooter might have a head start on an insanity defense.
Send him/her to me and insanity claims would probably dry up.
What is the difference between Nikolas Cruz and U.S soldiers killing civilians in Iraq, in Syria, and in Afghanistan in the name of the Zionist fake Jewish Banking Oligarchs of the Federal Reserve System, and the owners of the Military Industrial Complex? None, Nikolas Cruz massacre is nothing more than collateral damage.
Americans exchanged the Bible for the gun, and now they are reaping the violence they have been sowing for the past 55 years.
Nikolas Cruz, and his 34 victims and all the previous shooters and their victims are the victims of the good people and their pastors who sold them out for 30 pieces of silver (501c3) to that wicked woman Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who on account of their silence was successful in removing Bible reading and prayer recitation from the curriculum of public education.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court in Stone v. Graham opined in reference to the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.”
However, the five parasites of the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the Establishment Clause stating “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”
Now, Americans are too proud to admit that the biggest mistake they have ever made since the inception of America, was the removal of the Ten Commandments, Prayer Recitation, and Bible Reading from the curriculum of Public Education
America is truly a nation of brainwashed morons, now they want teachers to carry guns, soon, the headlines will read, “Student shot death by a teacher,” Teacher shot student over a pencil.”
You would think that after 55 years, the morons would realize that morally America is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah and that it is time to reverse the screw up of the Centuries by displaying the Ten Commandments, and by reinstating Prayer Recitation and Bible Reading in the curriculum of Public Education.
Americans are very attentive to the love of Jesus, but not the commandments of Jesus, such as do not kill, however, Americans legalized abortion on demand. Jesus also says do not commit adultery, yet Americans managed to legalize divorce, etc. People want to hear that Jesus loves them, as long as there are no strings attached to His love.
However, the part where Jesus says, “You are my friends if you obey what I command you” it is not preached because it turns people off, people want to fornicate, get stoned, sodomize, abort, steal, embezzle, and party without any restrains. In other words, money is the god they really worship and obey, not Jesus Christ, as they claim.