An elected lawmaker was shot dead today during a City Hall Council meeting in one of the most tightly guarded buildings in the most tightly guarded city in the most tightly guarded nation of the world.
We are told that New York has tough gun control laws, yet much of the rest of the country does not. There is no wall around New York.
We believe that New York is open to and loved by people from around the world, yet much of the rest of the country fears and hates those unlike themselves. Because of its importance as a symbol, New York has been and continues to risk being the primary target of a world angry with our disastrous foreign political and economic policy.
Today's deaths were not the work of a terrorist, but the circumstances which made them possible would work for anyone determined to wreak even the same or much greater havoc in another location tomorrow.
We could spend trillions (although we never will), but we still wouldnt have security in our streets, our places of work, even our great monuments and institutions. The world cant offer perfect security, but we would do far better, and at far less psychological, social and monetary cost, if we prevent easy access to firearms and if we begin to relate to the rest of the world with intelligence and justice.
We cannot continue to shoot each other to make us safe from guns, just as we cannot continue to bomb people to avoid the bombs of others.
And from Barry just now: "We don't believe in prevention, only punishment."