Doesn't Fit the Narrative

So we had a horrible, horrible crime happen here in MA. A father, distraught over the direction his marriage had taken, kills his two small kids, his wife, and his mother-in-law, then runs for the border. Yet there's little talk on the national news about this killing; I wonder how much press it would have received here in MA had it happened in, say, WV or WY.

Father arrested in family slayings

The 43-year-old Winchester sales executive accused of killing his family, including his two young children, was caught in a small, rural town just south of the Vermont border yesterday, a day after fleeing his home, where police said he left letters confessing to the crime and describing his marital and financial problems.

Thomas Mortimer IV was arrested in Bernardston on four counts of murder in the deaths of his wife, mother-in-law, 2-year-old daughter, and 4-year-old son, whose bloodied bodies were found in the house by firefighters and emergency medical technicians, said District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. Leone appeared shaken during a press conference following Mortimer’s arrest.

This is exactly the kind of heart-rending, tragic story that the anti-gun forces love to seize upon. They love to point out that you're "43 times more likely" to be killed with a gun in your home. They trot out the statistics that show people are killed by friends, family, and acquaintances far more often than by strangers. And yet the VPC isn't dancing in the blood of the innocents here.

Why not, you ask?

Leone said Mortimer used “blunt force trauma and sharp objects’’ to kill his family, though he did not specify the weapons.

No firearm, no firearm death. Not that I suspect the Boston Globe of chicanery or anything, but I do find it worthy of note that the manner of death is left for page two. Had he shot his family to death I am fairly certain that information would have been in the headline, or at least in the first paragraph. Since it doesn't fit the narrative, though, it's left for the "continued on page 134" section. And this is precisely the problem I have with the "blame the gun" types who would have us believe that it's the tool that's the problem, not the people using said tool. Those types would outlaw all guns under the guise of preventing tragedies like this one; completely oblivious to the fact that nothing is going to stop an insane killer hellbent on causing death and destruction.

My heart goes out to the surviving family. I cannot fathom the crushing pain they must be feeling right now - a family lies dead, murdered at the hand of one of their own. As a father I am appalled; the thought of harming my children is so completely alien to me that I cannot even begin to comprehend how someone could do this. Words cannot express how deeply I loathe the person responsible; nor how little it matters to me what tool he used. I have sworn a sacred oath to keep my family safe at all costs; as the father, as a parent, I owe my children nothing less than my very life to keep them safe from harm. I would gladly give my life if it meant they could live; I am equally ready to take any measure needed to keep them safe, up to and including keeping firearms in the home as our line of self-defense. Gun control proponents would strip me of these tools, oblivious to the cold, harsh realities of life.

For one family in Winchester, MA, all the gun control in the world was meaningless.

That is all.