Every time there is a shooting that involves either a white shooter or children, the Democrats have a field day. But if the shooter is not white, things are different.  Recently, a man who believed in “one China” attacked a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods, California, killing one and wounding several.  A salon in a Korean neighborhood in Dallas was attacked by a black shooter.  A Muslim shot and killed a passenger on a New York subway train. At the Waukesha Christmas parade, a black man deliberately drove his SUV into the parade in a zigzag pattern to kill as many marchers as possible. He killed six people and injured sixty-two others including grandmothers and children.

But none of these remained in the news for long because none of the perpetrators were white. When a leftist, self-proclaimed socialist and eco-warrior, who claimed to hate Fox News, capitalism, and conservatives shot and killed innocent shoppers in a largely black neighborhood, he was immediately dubbed a “white-supremacist” and blame was placed on Fox’s Tucker Carlson and conservatives, despite the shooter’s own words.  He was white.  His victims were black.  He must have been a racist Republican because we all know how much Democrats love black people, right?

And now we come to the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.  The shooter was a mentally ill (as most of them are) Hispanic, so Democrats couldn’t blame racist, white-supremacist Republicans.  So, they blame the gun.  If only people couldn’t buy guns, there wouldn’t be shootings like this, they cry!  But in their short-sighted view of life they never look at the facts.  Legally owned firearms prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes each year, or 6,849 each day.  Most often the gun is never even fired.  400,000 life-threatening crimes are prevented each year by gun owners.  In fact, the Center for Disease Control, in a report ordered by President Obama in 2012 following the Sandy Hook Massacre, estimated that the number of crimes prevented by guns could be even higher—as many as 3 million annually, or some 8,200 every day.

An example occurred recently, but you will probably not hear about it. Wednesday night in Charleston, West Virginia, a shooter appeared at a graduation party and began firing at the crowd. An armed woman with a concealed carry permit drew her gun and ran towards the man, shooting and killing him.  Luckily, he had not managed to hit anyone before she stopped him.  But what if she had not been there with her gun?  How many would have died before the police could have gotten to the party?  Two?  Five?  A dozen?  Everyone?

The shooter in Uvalde used an AR 15 which the left loves to call an “assault rifle,” a weapon of war.  A Facebook friend recently asked why anyone would need such an “assault rifle.”  “Were they going to kill 900 rabbits?” she asked.  I pointed out, for the umpteenth time, that an AR 15 doesn’t mean “assault rifle 15” but rather the AR stands for the manufacturer’s name “Armalite.”  Also, it is a hunting rifle, not a weapon of war.  It may look like the M16s and the new XM5s that the army just purchased, but they are automatic rifles.  The difference is something that Democrats and others on the left refuse to understand.  The AR 15, like my Smith and Wesson EZ handguns, is semi-automatic, not automatic.  A semi-automatic rifle fires one bullet every time the trigger is squeezed and one bullet only.  Then it places another bullet in the firing chamber, ready for the trigger to be squeezed again.  One squeeze of the trigger.  One bullet fired.   With the army’s automatic rifles, when the trigger is squeezed, the gun fires bullet after bullet until the trigger is released.  BIG DIFFERENCE!

In addition to that misconception, one idiot claimed on twitter that the AR 15 was the rifle invented for the Nazi infantry in WWII. Since the Armalite company was only founded in 1954 (Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945 for those of you a little foggy on history) and the first AR 15 was not manufactured until 1956, that would have been difficult!  But it sure made a good talking point!  “Those darn Nazi Republicans are trying to protect their traditional Nazi rifles!”

Another crazy article comes from Zach Seward, the editor of Quartz, who said he wondered how easy it would be to buy the rifle used in the school attack.  “It was like ordering groceries,” he boasted. “Click. Checkout. Done.”  He went on to say there was no proof of age required and no background check since that would be done at the licensed firearm dealer where he would pick up the rifle.  Right.  It is not so easy.  The rifle does go to a licensed firearm dealer who must run a background check which is NOT instantaneous, and only if you pass that are you allowed to pick up your rifle.  It is not like buying groceries unless you have to wait 5 days for the government to decide you can be trusted to safely handle milk!

Republicans and even the Federal Government’s Report on School Safety has made numerous suggestions that schools should heed, but in many cases have not.  They all recommend a single point of entry.  Schools in Paris utilize this, locking the doors when the students have arrived.  A buzzer must be used to request entry and a camera allows office staff to see the person at the door.  

But Democrats ridiculed Senator Ted Cruz for once again emphasizing the importance of the single-entry door, asking what happens in case of a fire?  Needless to say, this asinine question is simply answered.  There are, of course, numerous doors, but they are all locked from the outside. All the time. In case of fire, you simply open the door from the interior and exit.  But what about taking kids outside for recess?  You give the teacher on recess duty a key to the door to let the kids back in.  But can’t a second student open the door for a shooter from the inside?  Yes.  And the janitor could carry in a bomb, the teacher could give her students a quiz as one did in California asking them how comfortable they are with anal sex, or a meteor could fall on the school.  You cannot prepare for everything, but disarming the law-abiding is not the answer to more safety.  Citizens cannot carry guns in Great Britain so they have had a spate of knifings in London in the past couple of years.  Eight hundred individuals alone were arrested in one week in London, England for knifing crimes. You don’t need guns to kill.  People who are determined to kill will find a way.

So what else can schools do to protect their children?  Playgrounds are mostly fenced already, but privacy fencing would be far safer, preventing a shooter from seeing the children and firing on them from off of school property as has happened in the past.  Time after time, having an armed Resource Officer in the school or better yet, two, has saved lives and often prevented any deaths from occurring in an active shooter situation.  You need, however, officers who are dedicated to their jobs, like the Border Patrol Agent who rushed into the Uvalde school and took down the shooter while the police apparently stood around outside waiting for the Swat Team to arrive as children and teachers died inside. 

Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens saves lives as statistics show.  And “semi-automatic rifles (such as the AR-15) are commonly used as self-defense weapons in the homes of law-abiding citizens because they are easier to control than handguns, are more versatile than handguns, and offer the advantage of up to 30 rounds of protection. Even Vox has published stories defending the use of the AR-15,” ( Heritage Foundation).

AR-15s have been used to save lives on many occasions, including:

  • Oswego, Illinois (2018) — A man with an AR-15 intervened to stop a neighbor’s knife attack and cited the larger weapon’s “intimidation factor” as a reason why the attacker dropped the knife.
  • Catawba County, North Carolina (2018) — A 17-year-old successfully fought off three armed attackers with his AR-15.
  • Houston, Texas (2017) — A homeowner survived a drive-by shooting by defending himself with his AR-15.
  • Broken Arrow, Oklahoma (2017) — A homeowner’s son killed three would-be burglars with an AR-15 (the man was later deemed to have acted in justifiable self-defense).
  • Ferguson, Missouri (2014) — African-American men protected a white man’s store from rioters by standing outside armed with AR-15s.
  • Texas (2013) — A 15-year-old boy used an AR-15 during a home invasion to save both his life and that of his 12-year-old sister.
  • Rochester, New York (2013) — Home intruders fled after facing an AR-15. (“Here Are 8 Stubborn Facts About Gun Violence in America, 14 May, 2018).

Instead of looking for ways to score political points against Republicans or to remove rights guaranteed by the Constitution, Democrats should instead look at commonsense ways to protect the vulnerable from shooters.  Ignoring practical solutions to the problem is not the way to go.  When alcohol was outlawed in the United States, plenty of drinking continued, supplied by a burgeoning criminal class.  If guns are taken out of the hands of the law-abiding citizens, criminals will still have them and innocent Americans will simply become sitting ducks.  According to the Heritage Foundation, “Great Britain has some of the strictest gun control laws in the developed world, but the violent crime rate for homicide, rape, burglary, and aggravated assault is much higher than that in the U.S.  Further, approximately 60 percent of burglaries in Great Britain occur while residents are home, compared to just 13 percent in the U.S., and British burglars admit to targeting occupied residences because they are more likely to find wallets and purses.” Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws, and yet 797 people were shot to death there in 2021, mostly with illegal guns.

This seems simplistic, but it is true.  Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people!  Getting rid of legal guns will only make the situation worse.