After the Florida school shooting, all you’re going to read and hear are, “Why haven’t we banned guns yet?” or, “When will the madness stop?”
Advocates of gun control relentlessly ask these questions not because they know gun bans will prevent school shootings, but because of the questions they do NOT want you to ask.
It’s hard in a culture whose intellectual and media agenda is dominated almost completely by leftists who want guns banned to ask these questions. But you still can, and you should.
For example:
Why do these shootings always and only happen in government-run schools?
Clearly, public schools – despite being government property – are unable to prevent or control the spread of this horrible violence. Yet we’re counting on the same government to ensure that guns never get in the hands of violent criminals. We assume that the federal government can win a war on guns despite its complete and decades-long failure to win a war on drugs.
What about the role of ideas in violence? Ideas have consequences. When a terrorist shooter has ideas of white racial supremacy, advocates of gun control have no problem talking about the role of ideas. But when the terrorist shooter identifies with Antifa and Islam, the shrieks for, “Ban guns now!” only become more deafening.
Obama used to love the phrase, “national conversation”. Why are we allowed to have a “national conversation” about the supposed panacea of banning guns, but never a national conversation about why violence is so prevalent at government-run schools? Why don’t we read about shootings at Montessori schools, Catholic schools or Jewish schools? Or in home schooling or private tutor settings? If socialization of children is so important, why do we leave control for that socialization up to the federal government – frankly run by socialists and Communists, for the most part – and then act so shocked when we get these results?
What ideas and attitudes are these students learning that leads so many of them toward hatred and violence? What are private schools doing right that public schools are doing wrong?
I understand the argument that public schools need to do a better job of policing students. But to be fair, what else can they do, short of turning these institutions into literal prison camps?
As the rest of the world looks to gun bans to solve the school violence problem, I will look to privatization of schools. When parents have both a choice and responsibility for choosing the nature and setting of their childrens’ education, instead of leaving it up to the hapless and hopeless government, it’s going to be a whole lot safer.
Perhaps the most compelling question of all: Once we further regulate or ban guns altogether, and the shootings continue to happen … What then?
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