He did it for the children! {update}

Here’s the Washington Post’s headline for its front page above the fold article about Edgar Maddison Welch, the gunman that put a D.C. block on lock down Sunday: Deluded into a D.C. ‘hero mission’?

It’s a dreadful headline because of the way it’s constructed and a wonderful headline because it warns the reader that things are only going to get worse. (Another link in case of FYPressReader.)

The article is many paragraphs about what a nice guy, loving father, his family and friends just can’t understand why he did it (but it must have been because he cared about the children) is the man who drove from North Carolina to D.C. in order to terrify people with his big old blunderbuss, because he read some words on the internet.

A portrait of Welch based on interviews with his friends suggests he is an adoring father to his children but also someone unable to claim interest in a career, including following his father, who is a filmmaker, or his mother, who volunteered as a firefighter.

“Unable to claim interest in a career,” mesdames et messieurs. For when you want to do violence to the language and skitter around the fact that the subject of the story didn’t have a steady job.

But it’s not his fault he read the words on the internet and cared. He loves his kids! He likes to hike! Friends just can’t believe he would do such a thing!

And it isn’t the fault of people like M. Flynn, the second of that name, that Welch fired a gun in a restaurant because they didn’t tell Welch to do it.

In the same way, Welch’s actions aren’t the fault of the people who wrote the words on the internet. These things just happen. Therefore, the non-violent portion of the population will just have to hope that when the concern-driven heavily armed man shows up where they are that they get an Edgar Welch, not a Robert Dear. Fingers crossed!

Here’s a fun game for those who haven’t read the story yet. Guess how many paragraphs the reporters write before they get around to mentioning the gun-toting cock nugget of the hour has a rap sheet? (Hint: Many.)

Welch has one conviction, for driving while impaired in 2013 in Salisbury. He has been arrested several times in North Carolina, once on a drug charge, in 2007, and he was in a police report when his name appeared on a forged prescription, according to records from Salisbury police. He was twice a victim of assault by someone with a gun, though details were not immediately available.

In October, police said, he was the driver of a car that struck and critically injured a 13-year-old boy. His most recent job is noted in 2013, in the impaired-driving case, where his grandmother wrote the court that he worked for his father’s film company, Forever Young Productions, making daily deliveries and pickups of film prints.

{Update: FYWP selects posts at random and turns off the comments. Because FY.}