Image via NY Daily News
Last Friday another school shooting dominated the headlines of the nation. A 17 year old student killed 8 fellow students and 2 teachers with an assault weapon.
Assault weapon in so much that the .38 revolver and pump shotgun, firearm technology that has been around for the better part of two centuries, were used in a deadly assault.
This attack threw a wrench into a narrative that the AR-15 and its ‘Assault Weapon’ peers are the cause of such high casualty numbers.
USA Today went so far in trying to adjust for this as to claim the shooter was using ‘less lethal’ weapons. Implying then that the carnage that COULD have happened if an AR had been involved would have been astronomically greater.
But more level heads in the debate, many who otherwise are against citizen ownership of the AR’s, have come to a hard conclusion… ALL firearms are capably lethal. So what is the point of banning just the ‘Assault Weapons’?
Arguments that held at least emotional teeth because a scary firearm was involved, a semi-auto handgun or rifle, are being shown under a harsh new light. The two firearms involved this time are the ones they implied were safe. The “I support the 2A but…” crowd just had the ‘good’ guns commit a horrendous act.
Plus the IED’s and Molotov’s that the shooter did not get to utilize. What ban prevented them?
This attack starkly displayed the evidence of what the Pro-2A community has been saying for a long time.
- AR’s and other so labeled assault weapons are not uniquely lethal
- A planned attack, conducted with deliberate method and lack of concern for the violence inflicted, will only be stopped by the attacker’s own choice or enough force in opposition
- None of the measures proposed by the anti-2A crowd would have prevented this attack
It has brought the argument to its intellectually honest end state.
Do you propose to ban the private ownership of firearms? Do you propose to repeal the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because you are convinced, despite plenty of contrary evidence, it is the lynch pin we need to curb deaths?
For my part I can only hope that this pushes the hardening of school’s physical security more seriously into the forefront… I doubt it though, that’s a scary discussion where certain truths have to be spoken that nobody wants to speak.
A principal or superintendent isn’t going to come out and say “We can’t keep your child safe.”, even though that is the truth. They can only try their best, or sometimes just try their best in a politically correct manner, to keep them safe.
And we have a segment of society that does not want to acknowledge that we do not value life they way we claim to.
All this said school is still one of the safest places a child can be. But ‘safest’ should not ever be confused with ‘safe’. No where is safe if a person is given sufficient motivation to make it otherwise.
