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Let's get into it:
A mom in San Diego called police yesterday to say that her son was suicidal and had left the house wearing camo and had taken some of her weapons. Hours later, he was one of two boys, ages 17 and 18, who were found dead in a car from self-inflicted gunshot wounds after committing a massacre at a mosque. The young men killed three at the Islamic Center of San Diego before taking their own lives.
"Hate rhetoric" was involved, say police, and the words "hate speech" were written on one of the weapons. Caleb Vazquez, 18, and Cain Clark, 17, were identified as the shooters. Clark had been a wrestler at Madison High School. Anti-Islamic writing was also found in the car along with Vasquez and Clark.
"At this point," said San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl, "There was definitely hate rhetoric that was involved. I'll leave it at that for now." A gas can with Nazi symbology was found in the car with the boys. One of them left a note. Clark was expected to graduate from high school later this month.
After a few years of hearing only about violence from the anarchist, communist left, we now see two high school boys taking up weapons to murder Muslims. The California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has known terror ties, blamed "numerous politicians" who "have spent the past year claiming that all 'mainstream Muslims' should be destroyed, that American mosques and elementary schools should be shut down, and that American Muslims should be expelled from our nation."
Undoubtedly, this horrific act of mass murder will be used by leftist and Islamic groups to bolster the narrative that Islamophobia is a major threat in these United States. I tend to disagree entirely. I think these young men were driven by the same kind of self-destructive impulse as so many of the mass shooters we've seen over the past few years. These shooters are bound to an ideology and see death and destruction as the only way out.
It's absolutely devastating. And as with so many of these shootings, I can't help but think of the mothers, the moms of the victims, the moms of the shooters, and the absolute horror that will meet them every waking day for the rest of their lives.
To know your child was gunned down and murdered is a terrible kind of pain, but to know that your child took the lives of so many others before taking their own is a brutal existence, too. The moms of the Columbine shooters talked about that years later, how their grief was overshadowed by guilt.
It feels like darkness converges on our nation and us. We need to find the light and share it.
Libby