“Suddenly a shot rang out, Kate fell, and looked at me and said, ‘Help me, dad.’ Those are the last words I’ll ever hear from my daughter.”

Jim Steinle offered those words on behalf of his daughter Kate before the Senate Judiciary Committee four years ago as he urged Beltway politicians to permanently remove violent criminals who are in America illegally.

That hasn’t happened because D.C. Democrats are less interested in protecting American families from illegal immigrant criminals than are the presidents of Mexico and El Salvador.

What ensued for Steinle was what amounted to a four-year persecution of their family at the hands of the justice system, culminating now with an appellate court overturning the wholly unsatisfactory conviction of Kate’s murderer for illegal possession of a firearm.

Stopping domestic gun crime and identifying those bent on acts of terrorism are vexing legal and cultural questions.

Removing a convicted felon seven times over who had been deported five times is not.

It’s a simple matter of political will.