On Monday, in the aftermath of an apparent terror attack in Toronto in which the suspect used a van to run down a crowd of pedestrians, leaving nine dead, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio tweeted:
This attack is merely the latest in a long line of vehicular terror attacks: Jerusalem, Berlin, Nice, New York, Chapel Hill, Ohio State University, London, Stockholm, Barcelona, Edmonton. Clearly, terrorists have learned that using vehicles is far easier for causing mass chaos than well-organized terrorism — it’s virtually impossible to stop a terrorist from obtaining a car and using it to kill pedestrians.
Now, if we were to substitute the term “gun” for the term “vehicle,” the above sentences would still remain true. But then anyone who tweeted out thoughts and prayers would be regarded by the Left as a sophist, fully devoted to the cause of maintaining gun ownership.
All of which demonstrates that the Left is far more concerned with weaponry used in attacks when such attacks can be used to push for full-scale gun removal than they are when other weapons are used. People who generally express thoughts and prayers tend to be consistent: they do so after vehicular attacks and gun attacks. But the Left only singles out those who express thoughts and prayers after gun attacks. It’s antipathy to guns, not antipathy to violence more generally, that leads the Left to attack the thoughts and prayers of those who express thoughts and prayers after massacres using guns.
Unless Bill De Blasio similarly thinks that he’s being a useless panderer when he expresses his thoughts and prayers now, that is.