Just as sad and predictable as mass shooting are, so are the obligatory rushes to politicize them, from the usual actors.
Most recently in Texas, 19 students and two teachers were killed by a gunman identified as Salvador Ramos who, fittingly was killed inside the school.
Former president Obama rushed to social media to weigh in. At least this time he didn’t remark that if he’d have had a son, he probably would have looked like Ramos.
But the cry is on to arbitrarily suspend the Second Amendment of the Constitution in the quest to avoid such mass killings of innocents in the future. Earth to the hysterical opportunists, banning guns won’t prevent such tragedies.
I know that math now is considered racist, but it does apply to life. And one BBC report quoted an estimate of 390 million guns in the hands of Americans. Even if you never sold another gun, there’s plenty to go around.
Moreover, this same story was eager to quote the number of gun deaths annually in the United States, citing the year 2020 as a record total of more than 45,000.
The article conceded, well down the page, that the majority of those gun deaths – 24,292 according to the CDC – were suicides.
That is the case most years and do you really think if guns were stripped from all hands, suicides would end? Pills, illegal drugs, knives, ropes, tall buildings or bridges, all are common alternative suicide methods.
Gun control advocates would do themselves a service by excluding the suicide numbers from their totals.
They also might want to weed out the numbers for single killings, sometimes legally justified and often not. And accidental shooting deaths shouldn’t really count as justification for gun legislation any more than drowning deaths should lead to banning swimming pools or bathtubs.
This leaves us with mass shootings as a small percentage of annual gun deaths.
Putting into force draconian gun laws would fail to stop mass killings for two reasons.
First off, criminals by definition don’t follow the laws. They would not be deterred by stricter gun regulations. California, with the strictest gun control laws in the country, had a mass shooting in Sacramento two months back that left six dead and 12 wounded.
Second, the knee-jerk response to cry for more gun legislation ignores any other factors such as mental illness, or eagerness to return criminals to the streets that might contribute to the problem.
In general, one is naive in the extreme to think that violent people might not carry out mass attacks with bombs, knives, or even airplanes as in the 9/11 terror attacks, even if somehow guns could be made unavailable.
Sick, crazed, anti-social types are the problem, not their weapons of choice.
What stricter gun laws would guarantee is that fewer honest citizens were able to purchase guns for protection, which they increasingly seem to need.
The law enforcement officials didn’t exactly distinguish themselves in their response to the Texas incident, delaying action before dealing with the shooter.
Reports indicate the gunman gained access via a door propped open – against the rules – by a teacher.
The school resource officer reportedly was not on-site at the time of the shooting.
In other instances, perpetrators had lengthy criminal records, or were reported to authorities prior to the assaults for dangerous behavior but ignored. Many have been able to post screeds on social media, which went unpunished, perhaps because the censors were too busy banning Trump.
Often these mass killers have documented mental issues, yet they are left to roam free among us.
Even when police do succeed in removing some of these threats from the general population, left-wing judicial activists eagerly return them to streets after mere months behind bars.
Making it tougher for honest, law-abiding citizens to purchase guns isn’t going to cure the long list of failings and raw statistics I’ve noted here.
Chicago, which is up to its armpits in gun laws, had 49 homicides in April. The fact that they didn’t happen in one incident means this doesn’t get as much attention. It does, however, make the point that adding layer upon layer of gun laws doesn’t solve the problem.
Sam Ross Jr's site 