By Steve Woodward
A media report on a day in the life of Durham’s streets:
Durham (N.C.) police are investigating a fatal shooting after a man died early (on September 2, 2023) near downtown. Police responded to a ShotSpotter alert. … They found a man suffering a gunshot wound and transported him to a local hospital. He later died from his injuries.
This is the third fatal shooting in Durham in two days
A media report on a day in the life at UNC-Chapel Hill:
The anger and frustration on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus was palpable (on August 30) as hundreds of students demanded during a rally that lawmakers address gun violence across North Carolina and the rest of the country.
The lockdown that students, faculty and staff were forced into (on August 28) ended after authorities arrested Tailei Qi, a 34-year-old graduate student in UNC’s Department of Applied Physical Sciences, later charging him with shooting and killing his faculty adviser, Zijie Yan.
The contrast could not be more stark. On the hallowed Chapel Hill campus students gushed with moral indignation (photo nearby) that a law on the books, or a law that should be contemplated, did not stop a random gunman from shooting and killing a professor. If only the deranged Mr. Qi had stabbed his professor to death. That outcome would have allowed reasoned consideration of Qi’s mental health state and, more importantly, likely would have spared UNC’s fragile snowflakes from the trauma of a campus wide lockdown and hours of “terror”.
About 18 miles away, near Durham’s N. Miami Blvd., two men and one juvenile were shot on August 31. Devon Rogers, 22, later died. The shooter was not apprehended. A few minutes earlier, Robert Terrell, 45, was found shot to death on Holloway Street, two minutes away.
The next day, September 1, Jaylen Routt, 20, opened fire with a gun on North Carolina State Troopers in Raleigh. Fire was returned. Routt was killed. Later that day, David Gillette, 27, was shot near Raleigh’s Glenwood Avenue by Tyrell Moore, 23, who was charged with murder by the Raleigh Police Department.
That’s four in less than 48 hours. A fifth man, unidentified, died after being shot in the incident described at the beginning of this post. The finality of his death is no less or greater than the death of the UNC professor, but you wouldn’t know it by the unhinged reaction to the latter. Read more.
There is no reporting to indicate that students attending classes at UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University or N.C. State University rallied to demand that lawmakers address these “routine” shootings beyond their campuses. There was not a hint of outrage or remorse. Classes were not cancelled. Counselors were not enlisted. If universities in these and other metropolitan areas held vigils to mourn gun violence that kills nameless innocents, campus life would be disrupted into perpetuity.
Remember how Joe Biden rushed to get in front of TV cameras after a white shooter in Jacksonville killed three black students on a university campus in late August? Meanwhile, radio host Chris Plante aptly noted a man, 18, was slaughtered on the streets of Washington the same day. The White House never utters a word about gun deaths in D.C., mostly involving black shooters and black victims.
To date, D.C. has seen 175 homicides in 2023 compared to 154 in 2022.
Recently, in Southern Pines, at our doorstep, three separate shootings were reported and just as quickly forgotten by the end of the seven-day weather forecast. Last spring, Sandhills Community College locked down its campus owed to the mere concern of an individual who expressed a threat to the security of the campus. Towns and neighborhoods would be locked down forever if every looming threat was considered.
A teen was gunned down in the heart of Southern Pines, murdered, last October 8 but this once unthinkable occurrence sparked little community outrage. Earlier that same day, in broad daylight, reported The Pilot:
Witnesses at the scene said they saw, “An African American man dressed head to toe in black with a black face mask that covered most of his face. (He) got out of the driver’s side of a white sedan and fired shots into the driver’s side of a dark blue Honda Pilot.” No injuries were reported after approximately 15 shots were fired (emphasis added).
In contrast, protestors raged in the streets of Southern Pines two months later, on December 3, because fellow citizens peacefully assembled to oppose a live drag queen show scheduled the same evening inside the Sunrise Theater.
Advocates for fetus killing rally annually for so-called Women’s March events. Who can forget their subtle pink stocking caps in 2017 after Donald’s Trump’s inauguration? But rarely do citizens gather for the “March for Lifeless Black Young Men Shot Dead by other Black Young Men”. It’s just not top of mind, and it won’t fit on a t-shirt.
What’s the point? It’s as clear as the hypocrisy that makes some deaths at the hands of gunmen deeply tragic and others run of the mill. It’s not the guns, it’s the sons — the sons of single parent teens born into poverty, destined for neglect and hard wired for violence. The Left’s generational soft tyranny of low expectations, and its ramped up war on the nuclear family, are only expanding the threat of random murder, from Durham’s worst pockets of lawlessness to little old Moore County.
The Second Amendment does not enable this unbroken chain. So, what breaks the chain? The Second Coming, perhaps?