He called a news conference on Monday, in the wake of a weekend of carnage in Northampton County. Easton just had its fifth homicide of the year. And in a South Bethlehem shoot-out, five people were seriously injured and a woman was dead
Morganelli spoke of the "night people," a culture of young "macho" males who use guns to "take care of business." While he stated that Bethlehem and Easton are still safe cities, he adds this caveat: "When it gets past midnight, it's not a good idea to be walking anywhere." At another point, he said, "A lot of these crimes occur after midnight."
Blogger Michael Molovinsky, who has been visiting gun stores in recent weeks to sell his target shooting guns, has noticed they are "now full of very light weight, highly concealable, high caliber pistols, supposedly sold for i>defense." He also notices that our lenient LTC laws "now permit anybody a gun, for any or no reason."
Why is this happening?
Bigots will claim that this is what we should expect from those people, whom they will call "animals."
But Theodore Roosevelt, of all people, is the person who predicted this, on October 14, 1912. He was running for President at the head of the Bull Moose Party, had just finished one speech and was on his way to another. While standing to waive to the crowd, a man armed with a Colt .38 shot the Trust-Buster in the chest.
Instead of listening to his friends and going to the hospital, Roosevelt insisted on delivering his next speech. "[I]t takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose," he told the crowd.
Now for the prediction.
"Friends, every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the "Havenots" arraigned against the creed of the "Haves." When that day comes then such incidents as this to-night will be commonplace in our history. When you make poor men - when you permit the conditions to grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our country."Roosevelt was half-right. Violence is becoming all too commonplace. But as Michael Molovinsky told me in a conversation yesterday, the "Havenots" are not just taking on the "Haves." They're attacking each other, too.
