Or perhaps not. "This is a terrible tragedy made worse by the fact that it took place in a house of hope and love," Gov. George W. Bush said in a statement from Detroit. "My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and the congregation." Not a mention of guns, but then neither he nor his constituents think gun control has any particular ability to prevent this brand of tragedy, and they may be right even if the irony of the incident does not escape Al Gore in the months ahead. What could have stopped the anti-Baptist? Police took several hours to take a look at his body, fearing that the corpse was booby-trapped, and they do not yet know whether he had a license for his weapon, an NRA bumper sticker on his car, or the membership card of some atheist terror cell.
In Fort Worth, a Church Is Violated by Gunfire
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Think anything was more of a violation of something sacred than shooting up a school full of kids? How about a church full of kids? Police in Fort Worth on Thursday were scratching their heads for a motive after a man, identified by police as 47-year-old Larry Gene Ashbrook of Fort Worth, dressed in black and spewing anti-Baptist rhetoric, burst into a church service for teenagers Wednesday evening and opened fire, killing seven and then himself. He was "cussing royally," said one survivor, but he was calm enough to both smoke a cigarette and empty three clips of a semiautomatic handgun into hallowed air and young bodies. Now the Wedgwood Baptist Church, on the day of Fort Worths annual "See You at the Pole" festival (in which teen Baptists at local schools meet outside for group prayers at the flagpole), is the latest sanctuary to be profaned by random savagery. And Texas is the latest state to wonder whether the guns on the nations streets are too many.