Only if they use a gun...

My home is four blocks off a parkway - four lane, divided, with a nice wide median. The terrain is rolling and a bit curved. While this is a residential area, not one residential driveway opens onto this parkway. Still, local traffic officials have determined that the maximum speed limit should be 35 MPH.

About a year ago there was an incident wherein a young man left his brain at home, crawled into his pickup truck and headed for some unrevealed destination requiring he drive north, the length of our neighborhood parkway. For some reason, he decided to ignore the legal speed limit and accelerated his truck to a very high speed, possibly over 75 mph.

An elderly neighborhood couple, southbound on the parkway, arrived at the intersection where they would turn left, across the northbound lanes, to reach their home. Just south of the intersection, the parkway reaches a rise in the ground. As our neighbors turned left into the northbound lanes, the young man in the pickup truck shot over that rise at a speed that made it impossible to stop. His truck hit the car broadside, killing both the man and his wife. Only local news media reported the "accident", and the driver of the truck was to be cited for speeding.

This was a clear case of reckless behavior causing the death of two law abiding citizens. But no nationally known rabble rousers showed up to lead a crowd of protesters. No one started a movement toward "pickup truck control". It was just an accident! Provided the driver's blood alcohol level is below 0.08%, death by reckless use of a motor vehicle is always just an accident.

However, death by a firearm is never just an accident or the act of a deranged person. Recent shootings in the workplace, on school campuses, or in a middle class gated community in Florida are always hate crimes or acts of blatant racism. They are widely covered by national news media, attract all sorts of people protesting for something or other and petitioning for more gun control.

What is it about guns that arouse such passions, while death by any other instrument does not?