Separated on the calendar by exactly thirty days, two significant and unrelated tragedies at South Florida educational institutions have extinguished innocent lives in horrific fashion. 

Estimating that approximately half the number of people died under the pedestrian bridge at Florida International University as lost their lives in the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, why do we hear no emotional outcries for banning all bridges, or at least pre-stressed concrete bridges that look a little different from old-fashioned steel bridges?  Where are the vilifying demands for the American Society of Civil Engineers to be disbanded?  Will the leadership of that organization be demonized in like fashion to the treatment endured by Dana Loesch, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association?

Lest readers regard these comparisons as superfluous and outrageous, please reconsider.  In both situations, the proximal lethal instrument of both failures was an inanimate object: a bridge recently and a gun previously.  Both objects were designed and constructed to suit legitimate purposes.

Leftists may be quick to contend that with the bridge collapse, malignant human intent was not a factor, as it was in the case of school shooter, Nikolas Cruz.  This is precisely the point.  Humans sometimes cause destruction, either on purpose or through construction mishaps.  To denounce the lifeless utensils that inflict the final, fatal blows is absurd.  Whenever guns are misused, the outrage and blame are preposterously reversed by the left.

If a saboteur had tampered with the FIU bridge to willfully cause intentional loss of life, would any right-thinking person, even those on the far left, subsequently propose banning bridges in the aftermath? 

The differing factor, the intent of a cold-blooded killer, is what makes the tragedies different.  However, if the physical object in the shooting was the primarily "guilty party," then why isn't the bridge itself thought of similarly?  On the other hand, if the human perpetrator is acknowledged as the pivotal factor in the school shooting, why squander valuable time, money, and energy focusing on his tools or even the frightening appearance of his particular tool when authorities have divulged that Cruz had a pipe bomb in his home, which he might have used on Valentine's day instead?

If leftists were merely clueless, they would earnestly and vigorously advocate bridge-banning in similar manner to what has transpired over the past month, with their focus resting virtually entirely on guns.  Their exclusive double standard in the domain of weapons logic almost certainly reveals more Machiavellian intentions.

Image: Nicholas A. Tonelli via Flickr.