Murder

Yesterday's killing of a wildlife conservation officer was, by my count, the fifth murder in Adams County in the last two or three years. This is a tragic event and I hesitate to make political commentary on it, but I will nonetheless. My political commentary on it is this. If you ask the typical resident of Adams County what is the source of most violent crime in our area, I would bet their answer would be: drug trafficking, blacks, illegal Mexican immigrants, black-Hispanic drug dealers in transit from DC towards the northeast. The fact is that all five of the (convicted or alleged) killers in Adams County were white. One man killed his wife in their house in Lake Heritage, a solidly middle- to upper-middle class community outside of town. A student at Gettysburg College killed his ex-girlfriend. A man somewhere in Carroll Valley killed his wife and son. A man somewhere in Carroll Valley killed a younger man he was camping with. And now this. White people, domestic violence, rural or suburban settings, in most cases involving guns.