Washington Shooter Wasn’t Allowed to Own Guns

Arcan Cetin, the 20-year-old Muslim charged with murdering five people at Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, broke all kinds of laws on Friday night. He stole several guns from his family – a crime. He was in possession of firearms – in violation of a 2015 court order. He brought those firearms into a gun-free zone – another crime. And then he killed people, which is also against the law, in case you weren’t sure.

Somehow, none of those laws kept Cetin from carrying out his bloody massacre.

Cetin may ultimately be charged for illegal possession, breaking the gun-free zone regulations, and stealing guns from his family, but those charges are probably not going to matter much. The five counts of murder – and any separate terrorism charges that may come down from the feds – will be more than enough to keep him in prison for the rest of his miserable life.

As of Sunday, law enforcement officials were unwilling to speculate publicly on a motive. And since Cetin is a Muslim who posted the phrase “SubhanAllah” on his Tumblr page prior to the attack – that means “Glory to Allah” – we can expect the liberals running the media to look under every possible rock before coming around to the truth…if they ever do. When violence arises from Islam, the world looks the other way.

When Cetin was arrested near his home on Saturday night, he did not resist. The arresting officers described his state as “kind of zombie-like.”

Cetin, a Turkish immigrant, does not have a social media history that would lead one to see him as a radical terrorist. That doesn’t mean he isn’t one, but it shows you that no matter how good we get at “profiling” these monsters, there will always be those who will slip through the cracks. And it shows you how foolish we have to be to consider making those cracks even wider – something our collective PC mentality is making a reality.

But even if this turns out to have little or nothing to do with radical Islam, Friday night’s killing spree shows us how our gun control laws provide us with a (very) false sense of security. Worse, they take away what security we might otherwise be able to wrap ourselves in. The gun laws are enough to keep your average mall shopper from packing heat, but they don’t do anything to keep killers from obliterating human life.

We need to come back to reality. That’s the only place that holds the solutions we seek.