Dion Lefler column: Will the Towne East shooter get the Rittenhouse treatment?
A teenager got into a fight at Towne East Square on Friday night, apparently got scared and opened fire, killing another teenager.
So what comes next?
Well, thousands of people will donate a couple million dollars so he can make bail and be represented by a legal dream team.
He’ll be assigned the most sympathetic judge in the courthouse who will constantly send the jury signals throughout his trial, subtle and unsubtle, that he’s a good kid and go easy on him.
And then when he’s found not guilty, he’ll be invited on the Tucker Carlson show to take a victory lap.
Oh, wait, that’s Kyle Rittenhouse, the white 17-year-old who killed two people in Kenosha, Wisc., after inflicting himself and his assault rifle onto a Black Lives Matter protest, getting into a fight and getting scared.
The 16-year-old being held in the mall shooting is Black and will probably get every book in the law library thrown at him.
The shooting’s already being defined by police as “gang-related,” a combination adjective that brings stiffer penalties and that we didn’t hear applied to the Rittenhouse shooting, even though he was part of an organized group in cosplay soldier suits who went to Kenosha armed to the teeth and looking for trouble.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not justifying any of this.
The Towne East shooting was, as Mayor Brandon Whipple said, a senseless and stupid tragedy that left a 14-year-old dead and at least two families shattered. And interim Police Chief Lem Moore was absolutely right when he called it “traumatic for our community.”
But is it traumatic enough to change the everywhere-all-the-time gun culture that permeates Wichita and Kansas?
Not likely. The shooting at Olathe East High School two weeks before didn’t even scratch the paint on the widespread belief in this state that the solution to more gun violence is more guns.
Too many of us love that sweet sense of security that comes with a holster or pocket full of courage. And too many of us love it too much to let a rising murder rate or the occasional shooting that sends hundreds fleeing in terror change our minds.
If we do want to reduce youth gun violence, the first step is to realize that kids take their signals from adults and model our behavior accordingly.
This might surprise you, but I’m a gun owner myself. When I had children, I kept the guns locked away and they didn’t even know I had them until they were old enough to understand responsible use.
It’s been seven years since the state Legislature passed “constitutional carry.” That law says if you can legally own a gun, you can carry it openly or concealed pretty much anyplace you want with neither license nor training.
Today’s teenagers have spent their entire formative years watching as gun proliferation and Stand Your Ground are glorified in principle and justified in practice when the inevitable deaths occur.
They see a Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted and rewarded.
They see the holstered firearms and telltale Glock bulges under windbreakers when they go to the mall, or just about anywhere else in Wichita.
They see the congratulatory comments on our Facebook page when a guy shoots somebody trying to steal a catalytic converter.
They see when guards at the Juvenile Intake Center are excused from prosecution for killing Cedric Lofton, a teenager in mental crisis, because they were just “standing their ground.”
When we adults act like this, how can we really expect our children to act any differently?
If you’re looking for the real authors of Friday’s shooting at Towne East, look north to Topeka and our state Capitol.
And if you’re one of those who keeps sending the same gun-crazy politicians back there to write crazier and crazier gun laws, then look in the mirror.
This story was originally published March 21, 2022 at 12:00 AM.
