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Devoted newshounds may recall the incident last November in which a deranged man held hostage the occupants of one of Hillary Clinton's campaign offices in New Hampshire. He threatened to blow them all up with a suicide vest. The "dynamite" was actually road flares and nobody was hurt, but there were a few anxious moments among Hillary's campaign staff.
A lot more people are going to hear about this week's rather more serious event, this time in Arkansas. Reports are sketchy, but at this point it appears that the Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman, Bill Gwatney, was shot at party HQ. The attacker fled but was chased and gunned down by police; we have no reliable information on his identity or motives.
Two makes a pattern. This isn't the first pattern, either. Over the last decade or so, as formerly rare incidents of school shootings turned into a bloody trend, the pundits have been consumed with handwringing. How could it happen? Why aren't we protecting the children better? Shouldn't someone have prevented it?
Only with last year's atrocities at Virginia Tech followed by a dreadful mall shooting in Omaha did public debate finally come to rest on the question of why there? What is it about schools, malls, and other similar places that seem to attract suicidal mass murderers?
The answer is as plain as it was previously ignored: in most places, schools and malls prohibit guns entirely, even to those otherwise legally licensed to carry them. Therefore a murderer, who by definition is no stickler for the law, can open fire in confidence that his victims can't shoot back.
The students at VT, and the shoppers in Omaha, as well as countless others all across the nation, are victims of gun control. The Supreme Court implicitly said as much in their recent ruling that individual American citizens have a personal right to possess firearms if they so choose, and that it is unconstitutional for governments to flatly outlaw them.
Looks like the demented among us are sane enough to have identified a new place to safely assault unarmed victims: their local Democratic Party HQ. After all, while a Democratic politician might find it expedient to be photographed hunting, it's very difficult to imagine any ambitious Democrat carting a weapon around as a matter of course.
A desire to regulate private firearms out of existence has been the hallmark of the Party for many decades; Barack Obama is no exception. When a madman wants to kill somebody and doesn't much care who - reports appear to indicate that the shooter didn't even know Mr. Gwatney - the choice of firing range fits.
It's hard to know fully how to react to this tragedy. On the one hand, walking up to someone and shooting them - even a Democratic Party Chairman - is utterly wrong, and it's satisfying to hear that the shooter has already paid the appropriate price thanks to the prompt action of the local police.
On the other hand, however, there does seem to be an element of poetic justice in the possibility that Mr. Gwatney might have had a better outcome had he or his colleagues availed themselves of the Second Amendment rights his chosen political party so loathes. Can we say contributory negligence? At least we can honor him for staying true to his beliefs even at the ultimate personal cost, quite an uncommon virtue these days.
Now why do you suppose that this doesn't generally happen at, say, the headquarters of the Texas Republican Party? Could it be that there's a reason that the Founding Fathers felt firearms worthy of mention in the Bill of Rights?
Here's hoping the Dems reconsider their stance, if only for the sake of their own skins. Two makes a pattern; three a trend.