Last night in our nation’s capital, a baseball game between the San Diego Padres and the Washington Nationals was interrupted in the sixth inning when the occupants of two cars began shooting at each other outside the park.
Fans were evacuated from Nationals Park Saturday night after a shooting occurred outside the stadium. Footage shows people rushing to leave the stadium, and the game has been suspended. https://t.co/HE4P1BXHsj pic.twitter.com/Pv0mRYiDqX
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 18, 2021
Here’s the Associated Press’s account of what happened . . .
The game between the San Diego Padres and Washington was suspended in the sixth inning Saturday night after a shooting outside Nationals Park that caused echoes of gunfire inside the stadium and prompted fans to scramble for safety in the dugout.
The shooting, an exchange of gunfire between people in two cars, left three people injured, according to Ashan Benedict, the Metropolitan Police Department’s executive assistant police chief. One of the people who was shot was a woman who was attending the game and who was struck while she was outside the stadium, he said. Her injuries weren’t considered life-threatening.
Two people who were in one of the cars later walked into a local hospital with gunshot wounds and were being questioned by investigators, Benedict said, and the extent of their injuries wasn’t immediately clear. Investigators were still trying to locate the second vehicle involved in the shooting.
The gunshots caused panic among fans inside the stadium, some of whom ducked for cover, hiding underneath tables and behind seats as announcers warned people to stay inside the park.
“It was just a chaotic scene,” umpire crew chief Mark Carlson told The Associated Press. “We heard what sounded like rapid gunfire. We didn’t know where it was coming from.”
The Padres had just taken the field for the bottom of the sixth when several loud pops were heard from the left field side of the ballpark.
Fans sitting in left field quickly began leaving through the center field gate. A short time later, fans along the first base side began briskly leaving their seats.
Washington D.C. is a violent city. It has been for decades. And changes made in the last year haven’t helped that much. Last night wasn’t even the first time a Nationals game has been called on account of nearby gunfire. It happened back in 2013 due to a shooting at the nearby Washington Navy Yard.
The usual suspects were quick to chime in . . .
The national pastime interrupted by the national epidemic of gun violence. https://t.co/rJolF17FcU
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 18, 2021
Two American pastimes converge…#WHATWILLITTAKE#ENDGUNVIOLENCE https://t.co/iFeILCURJf
— ChristianHeyne (@TChristianHeyne) July 18, 2021
I woke up this morning upset about the shooting at America’s national pastime sport. Gun violence is brought to America by the @NRA & the bullshit they sell, like “constitutional carry” a made up term that was sold to legislators & makes us less safe. https://t.co/qDszJ6PxJW
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) July 18, 2021
But perhaps a comedian’s thoughts (which were tweeted before the shooting) are the most appropriate.
I wish being stupid only punished the stupid.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) July 17, 2021
If only.
Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas in Virginia and Maryland are all governed by people who advocated for, and in many cases succeeded in reducing law enforcement resources in the last year.
Like so many big cities, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the city council were only too happy to jump on board the defund-the-police bandwagon. As some of the city’s leading lights said at the time, traditional law enforcement was highly overrated and needed a re-thinking.
Area Neighborhood Commissioner Teresa Edmondson, who represents part of Columbia Heights, said she didn’t think more officers were the answer.
“You can’t arrest your way out of social ills. It has to be a collective collaborative effort by city leaders that say, ‘OK, this is not working. Let’s try something else. Let’s try solving this from a public-health approach,” she said.
Black Lives Matter co-organizer April Goggans said the District already knows what works and communities across all eight wards are ready to step up; they just need the financial support.
“We’ve had answers that have worked and they’ve all been violence intervention and violence prevention,” she said. “… As much money as we spend on police, is it having the benefit of saving lives that we want it to have? That’s the fundamental question.”
And then there are the prosecutors. Both D.C.’s Karl Racine and neighboring Arlington’s Parisa Dehghani-Tafti are among the far-left “progressives” backed by George Soros who have politicized the criminal justice system and refused to prosecute many “petty” offenses, resulting in increased violent crime rates.
How is all of that working out for the city?
It’s almost as if deemphasizing law enforcement and twisting the criminal justice system to meet the demands of “social justice” have negative impacts on the peace and prosperity of a civil society.
Clearly the problem, then, is the guns. What D.C. really needs is more restrictions on the right to keep and bear them.
But wait. Washington, D.C. already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. So does Maryland and since Michael Bloomberg bought the Virginia legislature, Governor Coonman has signed every gun control bill into law that’s reached his desk. So that’s not the problem.
Not that any of that matters much. None of those inconvenient facts will sway the narrative or the opinions of those who are so heavily invested in furthering it. As far as the coverage of last night’s postponement goes, the guns will naturally be pegged as the culprit. If we can just do something about reasonable about them — you know, reform our laws — everything will be fine.
All the same people will spew all the same talking points.
The shooting apparently happened after they’d put Grampy Joe to bed last night, but you can be sure he’ll use the incident as further proof that Americans’ gun rights need trimming and David Chipman is just the man to help him do it.
No other high income country has their public events interrupted by gunfire and active shooter announcements. None.
This isn’t freedom. pic.twitter.com/J0KYJiIn4T
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) July 18, 2021
