If someone murdered one of your loved ones, would you be more concerned with who did it and why, or the make and model of the weapon used?

Would these concerns change if the murderer killed a police officer, or if the murder occurred during a bank robbery?

When we think of famous bank robbers like John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde, do we think primarily about what guns they used?

The reason I'm asking these admittedly argumentative questions is because today's Inquirer has a huge front page story about the murder of a Philadelphia police officer during a bank robbery, and you'd almost think the gun was the primary suspect:

A Philadelphia police officer was shot and killed with a military-style assault rifle late yesterday morning when he confronted a band of robbers who had held up a Bank of America branch at a ShopRite in Port Richmond.

You have to read the details to see that the "assault weapon" was only one of the weapons involved. Note that it is identified as an "AK-47." (I doubt very much that it was in fact an AK-47, as these fully automatic weapons are quite rare, very expensive, and extremely difficult to obtain. More here on AK-47 misinformation.)

The van stopped at Loudon Street near Roosevelt Boulevard with a patrol car behind it. Earlier, in the attack on Liczbinski, at least one robber apparently had gotten out of the Jeep and shot the officer as he left his vehicle.

The same thing appeared to be happening again.

But this time, two officers - one from the K-9 unit - got the drop on the one robber still in the vehicle at that time. They shot him dead.

Police said they had recovered an AK-47 assault rifle that they believed had been used to kill Liczbinski. The AK-47 had jammed and couldn't be fired, a police source said.

Last night, as police continued piecing together details of the day's events, officials could give only sketchy details of the heist that had begun it all. They could not even say how many robbers there were.

At 11:26 a.m., police radio received a report of a robbery at the Bank of America branch in a nook near the produce section of the ShopRite in the 3700 block of Aramingo Avenue.

No one was reported hurt in the robbery, and police gave no information on how much money might have been taken.

A ShopRite official, not in the branch at the time, noticed the robbers as they moved away from the counter. They were masked and wore draped, neck-to-foot clothing, he said. He could not tell if they were men or women. He saw no weapon.

Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, gave a slightly different description of the robbers.

He described one as a man wearing "Muslim garb" and carrying a shoulder bag.

He said a second robber, apparently a woman, was wearing full-length, "light-brown Muslim garb."

A third possible robber, a man well over 6 feet tall, was described as wearing a "dreadlock wig" and a construction dust mask. He had on blue jeans and a flannel shirt.

Police found discarded clothing in an alley near one of the shootings. A pistol also was found.

Perhaps I'm a very abnormal person, but my immediate feeling about this was first, outrage that another police officer had been killed, and second, outrage towards the murderers -- whoever they are. My immediate suspicion was that these were career criminals who never should have been running around loose in the first place. The problem is that there are no details in the Inquirer, so I had to search elsewhere.

Penn Live reports the name of one of the suspects:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- One suspect was charged and a second was being sought Sunday in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer who was shot with an assault rifle while responding to a bank robbery, police said.

Philadelphia police Lt. Mel Williams declined to release the name of the suspect, who was charged with homicide. A second man, Eric Floyd, 33, of Berks County, is also wanted on a homicide charge, Williams said Sunday morning. A third suspect was fatally shot by police.

Police are trying to find 34-year-old Eric DeShawn Floyd. Investigators say he recently escaped from a halfway house in Reading, Pa.

However, at the PA Department of Corrections website, there's only one halfway house listed in Reading, a place named ADAPPT.

If that's where Eric Floyd lived, escape from it would appear to be quite easy. Numerous rules for residents are detailed in this "RESIDENT HANDBOOK," and "escape" is listed as a violation, with "residents" (they're no longer inmates, I guess) being required to sign in and out. There's a huge amount of detail over correspondence, what to wear, and even where to put religious books and prayer rugs, but there's no rule against filing frivolous litigation like this which IMO wastes time, but I guess no person ever gives up his right to pursue frivolous claims.

Anyway, the issue is not what gun these people used, but who they are, and why they did it. I don't think it's helpful to simply label what happened "senseless" as Mayor Nutter has done, but that label is trotted out all the time. What is known is that at least one of the suspects is a career criminal; otherwise what would he be doing in a transitional halfway house?

Of course, career criminals are not allowed to have guns, but that tends to deflate the argument that more gun control would stop murderous robbers from having guns. Their actions are not proof that "assault weapons" are bad, but simply another example of how gun control fails utterly to deter members of a severely prohibited group of people that no one wants to have guns.

Therefore, the narrative must be that the gun did it.

And of course that the crime was senseless. As Mayor Nutter put it, the killing of Sgt Liczbinski was "just one more example of the senseless violence that takes place here in our city."

I'm wondering about something. Is it only the violence (in this case, the murder) which was senseless? What about all that led up to it? Was the escape from the Reading halfway house also "senseless"? How do we know that it didn't seem like a very sensible thing for the escapee to do? And the selection of the bank inside a ShopRite supermarket, the theft of a car, the illegal obtaining of guns, the selection of a team of associates, the wearing of "Muslim garb" -- were all of these things also "senseless"?

Is it reasonable to conflate a series of deliberate and planned acts which culminated in the (predictable IMO) shooting of an officer in this way?

Certainly the crime plan made sense to these career criminals. I for one would like to see them all executed for it. But regardless of what happens, I'll give them credit for committing atrocious and evil acts. I think it minimizes evil and tortures reality to call a bank robbery and murder by career criminals "senseless."

Frankly, it strikes me as "senseless" to blame the guns used in the crime, because I don't think it makes logical sense.

But logic is not the goal; the goal is gun control. Labeling gun crimes "senseless" makes a lot of sense in that context, as it's part of a deliberate plan to get rid of guns.

Sigh.

If only they wanted to do to criminals what they want to do to guns.