I can finally get my left hand up on the keyboard.... that one handed stuff is for the birds.
What can we say about the soulless killer of the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Devin Kelly? His ex-wife says ""He just had a lot of demons or hatred inside of him," which automatically puts him on the eligibility list for running for office on the Democratic ticket.
It's not like he hid these demons from everyone around him.
His high school classmates voted him "Creepiest Creep" at the Senior Prom. He wore Eau de Creepy Goosebumps aftershave to school and carved the names of girls he liked into his pet hamster. He tried to marry his father's chainsaw.
Okay, okay - I wandered off the reservation a bit.
In 2012 the Air Force bounced him out of the service and locked his creepy ass up for a year after he assaulted his first wife and nearly killed his step child. Guess the kid had red hair. Unfortunately the Air Force did not practice due diligence (piss on that, we're the Air Force) and failed to notify the FBI of his arrest and conviction so it could be entered into the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) databases so that law enforcement officers throughout the galaxy could be warned that a serious offender had just shown up on their radar, kill him.
Less than a week before the Texas church massacre, Kelley showed up at a festival dressed in black and acted so strangely that people kept a close eye on him, two longtime parishioners said Friday. Kelley "was completely distant and way out in thought," recalled Judy Green. She and her husband said Kelley often exhibited troubling behavior. At the fall festival held on Halloween night at the First Baptist Church, Kelley "didn't even blink -- he just stared," she said.
Was this enough to alert local police so he could be checked for weapons? Sadly, the answer is no. He should never have been allowed to purchase any firearm because of his history of domestic violence; this has been part of our federal laws for about twenty years. He escaped from a mental health facility, police recieved complaints of more domestic abuse after his release but failed to follow up. To "Serve and Protect" is easily defeated by incompetence and gross neglect.
People noticed that this man was spacing out, he posted pictures of his AR15. Kelly bragged to people about being armed. Didn't his send wife know about his past and his weapons? No one knew about his DV history?
His mother-in-law attended the church and could have warned others about his violent tendencies. More and more is being uncovered about Devin Kelly, but learning about his demons is not productive. Fixing a broken system is.
If there is anything we should have learned from the past, it is that we cannot depend on the government to protect us. The government will show up after the fact and clean up the mess and then we'll hold vigils. That is not satisfactory. We must pick up the responsibility of self defense and become more proactive. I am not espousing a vigilante response, just a well-reasoned attitude that if someone is acting strange and has access to weapons, perhaps the authorities should be notified.
Because of the government's failures, the only answer to this is to
develop situational awareness of possible threats. And develop
competency with the firearm of your choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please scribble on my walls otherwise how will I know what you think, but please don’t try spamming me or you’ll earn a quick trip to the spam filter where you will remain—cold, frightened and all alone.