Shocking killings are the product of failure: to deter offenders, to sanction inciting speech, and to assert that the law is the law and should be followed.
Millions of Americans were shaken last week by two horrific videos, which seemed to play in an endless loop on social media. The first was camera footage of last month’s fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte, North Carolina, train by a schizophrenic repeat offender. The second, of course, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday.
These crimes were different in many ways. Zarutska’s death was a senseless killing by a stranger, motivated by mental illness and unchecked by the system. Kirk’s appears to have been a targeted execution by an ideological extremist. But regardless of their differences, these disturbing killings reveal how perversely normalized such acts have become.
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal
Photo by Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images