So we all agree that murder is wrong again, right?

We don't have to clumsily equivocate about it now!

I have no idea why two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota were shot this weekend, with one of them killed alongside her husband. Authorities say it was “politically motivated,” which seems obvious, though by what politics it’s unclear. Was it a right-wing psychopath or a left-wing psychopath? Was the shooting about immigration or USAID cuts? Does the killer want to start a socialist revolution or a populist one? Who cares? It doesn’t matter because killing innocent people is wrong and we shouldn’t do it, ever, for any reason.

That wasn’t so hard to say. But it was pretty hard for a lot of people to say last year when health insurance CEO Brian Thompson was shot in the back of the head by a left-wing murderer. You will recall that there was a massive amount of equivocation—basically tacit support—from everybody, up to and including major national Democratic party leaders such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as popular left-wing commentators like Freddie de Boer: Everyone sort of sheepishly admitted that, yeah, murder is wrong, I guess, but it’s also wrong for health insurance companies to deny coverage for sick people, so in this case murder was, I mean, sort of okay, you know? This is not an exaggeration: This was the talking point that a great many people coalesced around. In my own fairly liberal neighborhood there are still more than a few yard signs visible declaring explicit support for the accused killer of an innocent husband and father. I live in a pretty conventional, progressive-leaning, middle-class U.S. neighborhood, with mowed lawns and trimmed hedges and all the trappings of pleasantly staid modern American life, and yet many people were openly voicing their support for the accused vicious killer of an innocent man— a guy who walked up behind a father and husband and blew his brains out in cold blood because of political differences—and it should bear repeating that my neighbors feel comfortable enough to put these signs out in their yards, meaning they sense, correctly, that this is not a radical position among progressives but a perfectly conventional one.

I don’t know about you, but for me this was a bit of what the geometrists call an “inflection point,” a moment when a lot of things were clarified in a short amount of time: I was never aware that so many otherwise normal people, from my own neighbors up to and including major national political leaders, were very, very, very okay with shooting and killing innocent people over healthcare policy. This was an eye-opener for me!

My opinions on the matter never changed and are very simple: It’s wrong to kill innocent people and we shouldn’t tolerate it or excuse it or equivocate on it, for any reason. It’s a great, easy, moral, defensible philosophy. Here’s the checklist: Are you guilty of a capital crime? Are you actively attempting to grievously injure and/or kill an innocent person? Are you a soldier in wartime engaged in offensive maneuvers? If you answered no to all of these, congratulations: You shouldn’t be killed. Notice that on this list are not “business leaders who I claim are participating in an immoral medical system.” Also absent are “politicians whose policies I probably mostly disagree with.” Don’t kill any of these people, or indeed nearly anybody on the planet. Easy peasy!

I should hope that this latest horrific episode would make it very clear how terrible it is to espouse support for violent, dangerous criminals who engage in evil acts of murder. Human lives are precious, even the lives of humans with whom you disagree on important and consequential topics. We shouldn’t support any kind of murder of anybody. So maybe—and admittedly this feels like a long shot—these awful killings in Minnesota will drive the point home, for progressives at least, that murder is wrong and we shouldn’t do it or voice our support for it, whether or not it’s innocent insurance executives or innocent Democratic politicians. Murder is bad! Full stop.