According to my various newsfeeds, students across the country plan to skip school again today to shamelessly dance in 19 year-old Columbine blood to demand more gun control. After all, it’s been nearly twenty years and we still haven’t stopped school shootings.
Let’s look at what they want:
Raise firearms purchase age limit to 21.
The Columbine shooters obtained their firearms unlawfully, through a combination of straw purchases and illegal sales to 17yos.
They broke age limit laws.
“Assault weapon ban.
The Columbine shooters only had one “assault weapon” (TEC-9; illegally obtained: see above) and that was smack in the middle of the 1994-2004 federal “assault weapon ban.
That one didn’t work.
Universal background checks.
See above, re: illegal and straw purchases.
They broke laws to get around background checks.
“High capacity” magazine ban.
The Columbine shooters used a carbine with 10-round magazines, a pump-action shotgun (illegally sawed-off), a double-barrel shotgun (illegally sawed-off, and just try to jam a magazine in there), and — yes — a TEC-9 (see above) with likewise banned “high capacity” magazines
And another one doesn’t work.
Bump-fire stock ban.
Well, commercial bump-fire stocks didn’t exist yet. But they weren’t used in Parkland either. In fact, we don’t really know of any crime committed with a “bump stock;” the recent “bump-stock-type device” proposed rule claims that the Mandalay Bay chumbucket used them, but…
Search for it: find a single instance where anyone connected to the investigation said they were used. The GAO, in a recent report, carefully noted that bump stocked rifles were found, but did not say they were used. The FOIA bump stock/Mandalay Bay ATF data dump redacted anything that indicated which guns were used and which were not. More than six months, and they won’t say what was used, even as “bump stocks were used” is the rallying cry for idiots wanting them banned by law and rule.
The shooters were prohibited persons (a judge ordered them into mental health treatment). That law didn’t stop them either.
But some other things certainly haven’t changed since Columbine.
The shooters, just a few months before the shooting, produced a school project video… in which they acted out killing fellow students in the halls of their school.
The shooters were known to the police, both for prior criminal arrests, and from an investigation of videos they’d posted in which they tested the illegal bombs they manufactured. The type of bombs they planted in the school. The police declined to apply for warrants, and dropped the matter.
Continuing with the theme of cops not doing their jobs, the police did not enter the school until the shooters had finished the job (on themselves). Although a couple of officers did engage the shooters outside, which is more than Coward County’s Finest would do.
The laws these ill-informed children are demanding already failed to stop mass shootings, even as they succeeded in violating the rights of tens of millions of people who didn’t do it.
Reality is not their forte. None have — or can — explained why the laws would work this time on people bent on evading those laws. Nor have they explained how laws against an unknown number — but definitely in the millions — of guns in unknown hands in unknown locations would be enforced, let alone deal with malicious “compliance”.
How many of these wanna-be future leaders are volunteering to lead confiscation raid teams because the targets are well-armed?
Maybe they’ll require gun owners to carry their illicit arms in clear plastic backpacks to make them easily detected, so the violators can be summarily hanged at their convenience.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
