KIRO NIGHTS

Gee: It’s not left vs right, it’s wrong vs right

May 8, 2019, 7:39 AM | Updated: 1:53 pm

Pierce County...

Video shows a robber who shot a store clerk in Pierce County on April 17, 2019. (Pierce County Sheriff's Office)

(Pierce County Sheriff's Office)

People are dying throughout the country because petty crimes are escalating into violent homicides.

Case in point — a surge in convenience store robberies that has left clerks dead and the robbers leaving with seemingly meager sums of cash and merchandise.

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To be completely honest, I am not sure I know what the solution is. I’ve been pretty vocal that I don’t think we need so many guns out there on the streets, while at the same time I don’t have problems with the good people having firearms, carrying them, and using them to defend themselves.

The people who take the time to register, clean, properly store, and secure firearms aren’t who I am talking about here. Those are people exercising their constitutionally-protected rights to bear arms.

I am talking about a different person. The person who decides to take a life based on the cash that’s in a convenience store register.

Maybe we have finally hit that point where America just doesn’t care any more. Has our younger generation become numb to the consequences of their bad deeds? Have drugs become so important to so many that brutal assaults and homicides for small amounts of cash become normal?

I immediately think “we are going to have to arrest a lot of people.” Then I wonder if that means building more massive detention centers and incarcerating millions of people. But other than building jails and hiring thousands of judges, what can we do once we have got to this point?

Do we no longer value human life?

Today we are seeing a problem with repeat offenders, and the solution isn’t “left vs right,” but that what’s “right or wrong.”

Yes, the opioid epidemic is an issue, and it can easily make a mind forget what is right or wrong and lead a person to do unthinkable things.

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I read these stories and hear the news about a person losing their life, who did nothing more than go to work to ring up our gas and other simple transactions. My heart cries when I read of a woman who was killed after she cooperated and handed over all the money the store had.

So what can we do? Why is this happening? What we can’t do is continue to point fingers and wait for more innocent people to lose their lives.

We should care more about lives than we care about left and right politics – right? You care about life – right?

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Gee: It’s not left vs right, it’s wrong vs right