There were no terrorist ties locally or foreign. Why then would anyone want to kill innocent people who were in church? The killer had a history of problems, including trouble while in the US Air Force for which he served time in jail. He escaped from a mental facility so apparently he was being treated for a mental disorder. Why wasn’t he caught and replaced in the mental facility? Why wasn’t his history available during his background checks? So many questions but only a few answers.
I recently attended a board meeting for a free clinic. I serve on its board. We are giving out free sterile syringes and needles to drug addicts. The justifying reason is to prevent the spread of hepatitis C by reusing needles for heroin injections. The cost of the disease is extremely high, and the state is usually the payee for treatment. This sounds as if we are condoning drug use and maintaining the addict’s continued addiction. We are because we cannot seem to find a way to stop the drug use and do not have enough facilities to treat the user. Treatment facilities cost a lot of money, and I guess it is cheaper to just hand out needles. I do not want to argue or discuss drug use in this missive but do want to point out that we have a national problem that seems to have no known cure.
We have accepted the users’ dilemma just as we accept traffic accidents and only those affected by the user are at a complete loss as to why this problem is not being worked on in a more vigorous way. We have given out long jail terms to drug sellers and smugglers and then reduced those sentences due to over crowding. Recently our former president commuted the sentences of many convicted of drug crimes because they were deemed nonviolent. Ask the parent if their child’s overdose was a non-violent crime.
Just as the traffic laws are ignored by many, the use of illegal drugs is not a problem until their use affects you personally. Ignoring the problem of drug addiction and accepting it as expected behavior is not much different than taking the mental health issues or crimes of an individual and not updating the database needed to prevent gun purchases. How would someone connect the need to update a database with a mass killing? As my state is dealing with an enormous opioid crisis, other states are or have defied federal law and allowed the production, sale and use of illegal drugs. Most have used medical use as their reason to OK drug use, but some have simply said it is fun and makes a lot of money. Apparently, if enough money is received by the state, anything is possible.
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