Defund the Police vs. Memorial Day Mass Shootings: Who is to Blame?

The Right’s reflexive cry to 'defund the police' is a convenient lie that ignores the actual data. Studies from the Brennan Center and the National Institute of Justice show no correlation between police budget cuts and violent crime spikes. In fact, cities that invested in community-based intervention—like Camden, New Jersey—saw crime drop while reducing police presence. You’re not arguing for safety; you’re arguing for a fantasy where a militarized force can out-shoot every angry, radicalized loner. That fantasy is exactly what led to the militarization of police, which, by the way, doesn’t stop shooters—it just makes them feel more justified in their war against the state. The Memorial Day shootings are a product of easy access to high-capacity weapons, not a lack of patrol cars. You claim defunding creates soft cities, but look at the real numbers: the U.S. has 4% of the world’s population and 46% of its mass shootings. Is that because our police are underfunded? No—it’s because we have 400 million guns in civilian hands. Compare us to Australia, which banned assault weapons after a massacre and saw a 28% drop in gun deaths. Or Japan, where strict gun laws mean mass shootings are virtually nonexistent. You can’t out-police a gun culture that allows a 19-year-old to buy an AR-15 after a background check that barely takes a minute. The problem isn’t the cop on the street—it’s the lobby that sells him a weapon of war. And your cherry-picked examples of Chicago and Baltimore? Those cities have some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, yet guns flood in from neighboring states with lax regulations. That’s not a police funding issue—it’s a federal enforcement failure. You want to blame the Left for 'softness,' but you conveniently ignore that the police in those cities are already overfunded, with budgets that dwarf social services. More police didn’t stop the 2022 Highland Park shooting—a parade where the shooter had legally bought his rifle. The police were present, and they still couldn’t prevent it. Your solution is to throw more money at a broken system that already failed. That’s not logic; it’s ideology. inally, let’s talk about accountability. You say the shooters exploit police pullback, but you ignore that most shooters are radicalized by right-wing rhetoric and online echo chambers—not by a lack of cops. The Buffalo shooter was a self-described 'white supremacist,' and the El Paso shooter targeted Latinos. Those are ideological problems, not policing problems. You want to blame the Left for 'softness,' but you’re the ones calling for a 'hard' approach that only militarizes the response without addressing the root cause: the easy availability of weapons designed to kill humans en masse. So, who’s to blame? Not the defunders—the dealers. The gun lobby’s blood money is on your hands, and no amount of blue-line rhetoric will change that.