Violent crime isn’t just a naturally occurring phenomenon that must be accepted in American society. It can be and has previously been mitigated — not all of it, obviously, but enough to where innocent people once felt safe in their everyday lives. But you’d never know it listening to liberals, Democrats, and gun control enthusiasts.
Under the Biden administration, crime has been soaring, with many of the country’s largest cities setting homicide records last year. Washington, D.C., set a record for homicides in 2021. This crime wave carried into 2022, with Washington’s homicide rate up 16% compared to last year. On Sunday, this violence touched the NFL, as one of the players for the Washington Commanders (formerly the Redskins) was shot during an attempted carjacking.
The incident prompted an unfathomably dumb response from the team’s head coach, Ron Rivera.
As the Washington Examiner’s Maria Leaf reported, Brian Robinson Jr., a running back for the football team, was shot Sunday evening. Fortunately, he sustained nonlife-threatening injuries.
The two criminals who allegedly attacked Robinson are believed to be teenagers, according to the investigation. A police report categorized the incident as aggravated assault.
Although understandably angry and sympathetic to one of his players being shot, Rivera also used the incident to take a political stance on guns. He compared the malicious actions of a criminal wishing to harm innocent people to gun safety.
“This continues to be a nationwide epidemic, gun violence. We have to get to a point where we talk about gun safety,” Rivera said. “We can’t make this a partisan issue. It’s something we have to work on to come together and be able to solve.”
Someone needs to inform Rivera that gun-toting criminals are bad guys. They don’t care about “gun safety.” They obtain guns, often illegally, and use them to harm people. They’re not signing up for gun safety courses at the local shooting range.
“It’s about education,” Rivera said. “If you’re going to own a handgun, it’s about knowing how to properly secure it so it doesn’t get stolen or so the wrong people don’t use it and do this.”
This quote is even more ridiculous. This is a crime problem, not a gun problem. It is a pandemic of criminals, not of people failing to store their guns properly. Such a comment from an educated adult is laughable if not insulting. But it’s indicative of the despicable lengths to which the Left goes to distort the reality about criminal behavior and the nation’s soaring crime.
Earlier this year, Rivera fined assistant coach Jack Del Rio $100,000 for making political statements that were a distraction. The Commanders organization should respond to this one by fining Rivera 10 times as much. Gun safety is not the reason one of his players became the victim of an attempted carjacking.
