As Isabel and I sat out front of Kansas City’s restored treasure Union Station Friday evening awaiting a train, we admired the official national World War I Museum and Memorial directly across the beautiful fountains and street. The site’s Liberty Tower soars 265 feet above the area with a striking flame-effect atop which uses lighting and steam to simulate a memorial burning pyre.
I wandered over to a sign which told of the “Kansas City Massacre” of June, 1933. The feds had re-arrested fugitive gangster Frank Nash after a prison escape and were transferring him back to the federal pen at Leavenworth when gangsters Vernon Miller, Adam Richetti, and Pretty Boy Floyd attacked the transfer car in front of Union Station in a hail of gunfire to free Nash. The morons killed their friend Nash in the process and also killed a police chief, two police officers, an FBI agent, and seriously wounded 3 other FBI agents.
There is much to say but one thing that must be remembered is that criminals going out in blazes of infamy is nothing new in our culture and neither is mass murder.
The next day, I learned of the criminal’s heinous shooting spree in Midland and Odessa via radio as KFYO News interrupted programming to bring live coverage from the Petroplex.
There is much to say but one thing that must be remembered is that criminals going out in blazes of infamy is nothing new in our culture and neither is mass murder. Before the Kansas City Massacre FBI agents were not permitted to carry guns. After they were outgunned by evil in front of Union Station, Congress armed the FBI with submachine guns and Winchester rifles.
And guess what?
Having more good guys armed eventually suppressed the heinous street violence of the infamous gangster era.
The same is true today. The only way to curb violence is to have more good folk armed and ready, at all times and in all places, to shoot bloodthirsty criminals when they act.
Every other solution punishes the good for things they have not done and, in most cases, makes the innocent an even easier target for ever-present murderers – both of which are evil in themselves.
Measures which address the human factors, which are the root causes of these crimes, are not emotionally satisfying to the left. Instead, they fixate on the mechanics, unnecessarily burdening the middle class, and transferring risk to the lower class.