Opinion

“Tonight on WBAL-TV: A man with an AR-15 has been showing up for weeks to a school bus drop off for local elementary school students. Parents say their kids are afraid, the man says he’s protesting Governor Wes Moore’s new gun control law. You’ll hear from both sides at 5 and 6 pm.” Tolly Taylor, reporter WBAL-TV, Baltimore, Md. via Twitter.

“I support him. He’s protesting. It’s 100 per cent legal. If you don’t like what he’s doing, don’t blame him. Blame the law.” Dat Le, private citizen/Philadelphia Eagles Fan posting on Twitter.

“I’m not really opposed to this if its done correctly and the common sense steps are taken for the community watch part… we don’t need laws to teach us to be reasonable and responsible gun owners.” EV_Trapper, private citizen, a trapper from Louisiana, posting on Twitter.

Hi, my name is Charles. Friends call me Chuck. I’m Canadian.

There is so much that I love about the United States. I love Las Vegas, even though their team beat mine in the Stanley Cup playoffs. I love members of my family in the United States. I love my former listeners and viewers and sponsors everywhere in the U.S.

But I cannot love the man with the AR-15 at a bus stop in Baltimore where small children are dropped off after school.

These kids are aware of others just like them, destroyed by rifle-toting assassins every year, in a country they are taught an anthem with the words “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”

How can a child feel free when they meet a stranger every day, holding a weapon of war that could slaughter them and their classmates in the blink of an eye?

Two weeks ago in the Dallas, Texas, suburb of Allen, a man with a rifle just like the one in Baltimore attacked shoppers with their children at an outlet mall. Eight people were killed. Seven were wounded.

CBS News interviewed a citizen named Steven Spainhouer who was one of the first to arrive at the scene of the carnage, and who said, “I never imagined in 100 years I would be thrust into the position of being the first responder on the site to take care of people… The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes.. So I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side, and she had no face.”

According to the same report, “Spainhouer also helped a child who survived the shooting and was hiding beneath his mother’s body. The mother had died.”

He said, “When I rolled the mother over, he came out. I asked him if he was OK and he said, ‘My mom is hurt, my mom is hurt’… So, rather than traumatize him any more, I pulled him around the corner sat him down… he was covered from head to toe in blood, like somebody poured blood on him.”

There are many things I respect about the United States. But can anyone learn to respect the gun culture that allows that kind of attack to occur?

And how does any Canadian respond to the man in Baltimore being allowed to hang around a bus stop carrying an AR-15?

How does a Canadian respond when the reporter doing the story tells people to watch the dinner-hour news package for both sides of the story?

Both sides?

This Canadian ordinarily would respond to this perverse bothsides-ism by asking, “Are you insane? There cannot be two sides to this disgusting visual. There is only one side: a guy with a rifle frightening children, the bus driver, their parents and anyone else who see this madness every day.”

But this Canadian worked in the U.S. for much too long to not understand that many Americans do actually see two sides.

Millions of our American neighbours respond like the football fan from Philadelphia and the trapper from Louisiana. They think there is nothing wrong with a man with a presumably loaded weapon on the street eyeballing elementary school children every day. They firmly believe that he has the right to protest new gun control legislation which may deprive the man of what he believes is his God-given right to do behave the way he sees fit in the “land of the free.”

There are many things I love about the United States. But if I ever fall in love with their definition of freedom, I hope the people who love me get me the kind of help tens of millions of our American neighbors do not seem to think they need.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com