Gun Control Won't Stop School Massacres

Every time there is a mass shooting by a deranged shooter, talks of enacting more gun control measures resurface. On Tuesday, a 12-year-old boy at a middle school in Sparks, Nev., shot and killed a math teacher, Matthew Landsberry, with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Two 12-year-old boys were injured. The teacher, a former Marine who served in Afghanistan, heroically placed himself between the killer and other students and tried to talk the student out of harming others. Sadly, the teacher was unsuccessful and the student killed him then took his own life. None of the school district’s 38 resource police officers were on the school’s campus at the time of the shooting.

The Obama administration responded immediately calling for more gun control measures. But it is extremely unlikely more gun control laws would have prevented this shooting. The current effort to ban “assault rifles” again wouldn’t ban this 9mm pistol. The student got the gun from his parents because they apparently failed to keep it securely locked up. The gun control lobby will clamor for trigger locks and gun safe requirements, claiming they would have prevented this senseless murder  – some insurance companies will not provide home insurance for gun owners unless there are trigger locks in the home – but that doesn’t stop irresponsible individuals from failing to use the trigger locks and gun safes. Passing more gun control laws just means more mass shootings will involve illegal activity.

The problem isn’t guns, it is people. There will always be evil people, and there will always be irresponsible people. In the modern era, parents are permissively and lazily allowing their children to play unlimited violent video games and watch unlimited violent television. Studies have proven over and over again there is a correlation between high levels of these activities and violent behavior in children. As long as parents are allowing these savage mediums to babysit their kids, instead of taking the time to really parent them, some of these children are going to act out violent tendencies.

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