LA Times columnist Robin Abcarian thinks we should be happy that ex-Marine Andrew Tahmooressi is locked up in Mexico because he took a wrong turn.
How fervently do we wish that the Santa Barbara deputy sheriffs who checked up on Elliott Rodger after a call from his worried mother had tried to discern whether Rodger owned weapons, legal or not? How fervently do we fantasize that his grotesque rampage might never had occurred had only a deputy or two been more suspicious, more invasive, more hard-ass about whether the kid had weapons?
Abcarian would have you believe Mexico’s criminal justice system is corruption free and that Tahmooressi, if not for his arrest, was the next mass shooter.
The assumptions she’s making are pretty offensive. Not every combat veteran with post traumatic stress disorder is a mass murderer. Not everyone with a mental illness is violent. Not everyone who owns firearms is violent.
Eric Holder’s guns have killed far more people in Mexico than Andrew Tahmooressi’s.
