{"id":84754,"date":"2022-08-22T21:02:51","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T02:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=84754"},"modified":"2022-08-22T21:02:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T02:02:51","slug":"84754","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=84754","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Gun control not a “resource” to stop mass shootings<\/a><\/p>\n

If the idea of being involved in a mass shooting, even if that involvement is just knowing one of the victims, is a personal nightmare of yours, you\u2019re probably right to be concerned. They\u2019re awful and the pain of having someone taken from your life like that hurts beyond words.<\/p>\n

Believe me,\u00a0I know<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In North Carolina, a sheriff decided to stop playing around and decided school resource officers will have AR-15s to use to protect students and staff.\u00a0To say some don\u2019t like that is an understatement.<\/p>\n

In the Charlotte Observer, one columnist\u00a0put his opposition into words<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Madison County, one county over from where I live in Asheville, garnered national headlines recently with an announcement that every school in the N.C. county will be outfitted with AR-15s this school year.<\/p>\n

This initiative embodies how many on the right today bend over backward to suggest anything but gun control as the salve for gun violence.<\/p>\n

Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood wrote on Facebook, \u201cto exhaust every resource we\u2019ve got to ensure that our kids are safe, that when they go to school, they can learn\u2026and they can go the playground and play, and not worry about some thug who\u2019s going to come out onto the playground and open up on them with some type of AR-15, shotgun, pistol, whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only Harwood didn\u2019t exhaust every resource. If he\u2019d done that, he would\u2019ve been advocating for meaningful gun control \u2014 a shooter can\u2019t open fire with an AR-15 if they can\u2019t purchase one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, that last paragraph is possibly one of the dumbest ever written in the English language.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, understand that there are\u00a0an estimated\u00a020 million<\/a>\u00a0or more AR-15s currently in circulation. Does the author think that a new law will magically make them unobtainable for the average citizen? I\u2019m sorry, that ship has long since set sail.<\/p>\n

Further, it\u2019s not like the AR-15 is the only weapon used to commit a mass shooting. In fact, handguns are far more commonly used for such horrific acts.<\/p>\n

Yet an AR-15 would allow deputies to engage handgun-armed would-be mass shooters at greater range, meaning they could save lives that much sooner without having to close to handgun range. Or, if such a killer has a rifle of some type, he can at least meet them on equal ground.<\/p>\n

Moving on\u2026<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban in 1994, outlawing AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles. As reported by NPR, mass shootings were down in the decade that followed, compared to the decade before (1984-1994) and the one after (2004-2014). Assault weapon bans work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except the study referenced used an odd definition of \u201cmass shooting;\u201d one that also happened to reduce tilt the findings more in the favor of the desired outcome. That NPR didn\u2019t critically look at that study isn\u2019t overly surprising.<\/p>\n

But the author is starting to approach his point:<\/p>\n

Harwood represents a bigger problem: the refusal of law enforcement in North Carolina to lead the gun control conversation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There we go.<\/p>\n

The problem is that Harwood and other North Carolina law enforcement officials aren\u2019t pushing his preferred politics. Yet there are valid reasons for this.<\/p>\n

For one, Harwood is an elected official, which means his politics are more likely to reflect the beliefs of his constituents. He\u2019s not going to push a \u201cgun control conversation\u201d in a pro-gun county unless he\u2019s looking to retire without having to announce it.<\/p>\n

Second, it wasn\u2019t that long ago when people like the author were screaming about defunding the police, and now they\u2019re upset that the cops don\u2019t seem to be on their side?<\/p>\n

The truth of the matter is that a lot of law enforcement see what happens when good people are disarmed. They\u00a0can\u2019t<\/em> stop criminals from getting guns, regardless of the laws on the books. They\u2019ve seen how those laws completely fail every time they arrest a known felon and find a firearm on them.\u00a0So, they often come to recognize that gun control isn\u2019t going to do the trick.<\/p>\n

They fail to push the author\u2019s agenda simply because they know it to be a complete failure of an idea.<\/p>\n

Putting AR-15 in the hands of school resource officers isn\u2019t just a good idea, it\u2019s the only sane one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gun control not a “resource” to stop mass shootings If the idea of being involved in a mass shooting, even if that involvement is just knowing one of the victims, is a personal nightmare of yours, you\u2019re probably right to be concerned. They\u2019re awful and the pain of having someone taken from your life like … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,13,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-schools","category-law-order","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84756,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84754\/revisions\/84756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}