“probably have a very different view if he had invaded your home or your daughter’s and done it.”
I would experience shock, and grief, I would certainly want the assailant brought to justice (I may even want to cut their throat) but I would be appalled at someone using their body for a soap box. Good Day, NFAR.
At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a horrific fire at a garment factory in NYC, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which killed over a hundred workers. As a result, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union advocated for and obtained many new workplace safety regulations. The sinking of the Titanic produced massive inquiries and a great strengthening of marine safety regulations. Heavy casualties in accidents on the nation's passenger railroads in the late nineteenth century produced the nation's first railway safety legislation, mandating use of air brakes and Janey couplers. In so doing, the supporters of such legislation and regulation enthusiastically "used the bodies" of the victims "as soap boxes" to advocate for greater safety regulation. At the beginning of WWII FDR "used the bodies" of those killed at Pearl Harbor "as soapboxes" to advocate entering the war.
A horrible atrocity, like this, is nothing but a pointless loss if we don't try to learn from it so that she who died did not die in vain. If she had died in a fire because she did not have either a smoke alarm or a fire extinguisher on hand, would you view it as improper and "using her body as a soapbox" to urge people to buy smoke alarms and fire extinguishers? Would you view using her tragic fire death as a reason to vote against politicians who obdurately opposed ownership and use of smoke detectors and fire extinguishers as improperly "using her body as a soapbox"? Or, would you more reasonably say such cruel, destructive, evil politicians ought to be driven out of office?
A loaded self defense firearm in the home is essentially the same thing as a fire extinguisher; it's just there to deal with a different life threatening situation, a home invasion. In fact, the United states has one of the lowest hot burglary and home invasion rates of all the English speaking countries precisely because so many home owners are armed and willing to use their weapons. Reports appear every day here on FR of how people saved their lives and the lives of their loved ones by the appropriate use of self defense firearms.
Obama, OTOH, has done his level best to destroy Second Amendment rights and to facilitate violent crime. Among other things, he's: 1) endorsed the terrorist Ayers' book which advocated more lenient sentencing for violent juvenile offenders; 2) personally voted against increasing the penalties for murder when committed by gang bangers and; 3) voted against overriding local ordinances that prohibit homeowners from using firearms in self defense. He's ardently defended the hideous Chicago and DC gun bans. Ideas and policies have consequences. In this case, it was at least indirectly encouraging and enabling he who perpetrated the atrocity. It is entirely tasteful, moral, and justifiable to call him on this to prevent him from being able to enact policies that will enable and encourage further such crimes.
Otherwise, we are willfully allowing this wonderful young woman to have been horribly murdered without even getting to learn lessons from her death that might prevent many other, similar, horrible deaths. The NYC authorities did not make such a terrible blunder in dealing with the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and we should not so so here on the basis of the specious argument that learning such lessons and acting on the basis of those lessons is "using her body as a soapbox."