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Death on South Street
I’m not gonna call them guns anymore. Or firearms. I’m calling them by their accurate names: murder weapons.
Gun are murder weapons. When used as directed, they kill. Yes, you could use them for something else, but they are designed to kill. Anything could have another use — you could prop open a door with a hand grenade. But guns are murder weapons.
Last night, a few people shot their murder weapons into a crowd on South Street, right near where I live, right near where I am writing these words. Several people are dead, and many more wounded.
Officers from a police station on South Street were patrolling the area when the shooting began. A good man with a murder weapon confronted a bad man with a murder weapon — but this didn’t prevent the carnage. The murder weapons won.
A few blocks in another direction is the Italian Market, an area I love where you can get a great variety of excellent fresh food — including pastries. But yesterday afternoon, I was wandering there alone, thinking about Buffalo and Uvalde. And the shop nearby that sells murder weapons. I want to put a sign there, maybe on a telephone poll nearby, saying something meaningful about murder weapons and what we should do about them.