Enough, Indeed

Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier

A few weeks back I wrote a prescription for the cure to school shootings. It wasn’t perfect, as no plan to respond to a violent and dynamic situation can be; but it was based on the firm foundation of the NRA’s self-defense in the home curriculum, scaled up to a school building. One of the most important features of the plan was that it was based around the teachers who choose to carry concealed handguns being allowed to do so while in the classroom. The lesson learned from the shooting on Valentine’s Day in Parkland, Florida is that a gun and a good guy must already be in the school when the shooting starts to be effective.

Sadly, this past Tuesday that lesson was re-demonstrated when Austin Wyatt Rollins, 17, decided he just couldn’t handle being dumped by his girlfriend – Jaelynn Willey – and so he stole his father’s legally-owned pistol, went to his high school in Great Mills, Maryland and shot her as well as another classmate. Then, a school resource officer, Deputy Blaine Gaskill, engaged Rollins and after an exchange of gunfire, Rollins was dead and Gaskill uninjured. Tragically, it was reported on Friday that Willey was being taken off of life support. The other student who was caught in the crossfire was shot in the leg and is recovering at home.

Presently, a bunch of sullen-faced, cynically-manipulated PTSD victims are glaring out at us from the cover of Time Magazine as we walk past the newsstands with the title “Enough” in bold print. They’re now all in D.C. to dance as puppets in the hyperbolic “March for Our Lives” rally in a city with strict gun control laws and a staggeringly high rate of violent crime committed with guns. The Stoneman Douglas High School students who oppose further gun control, and whose school was just as shot up, aren’t pictured.

Enough, indeed.

This nation’s 80+ million gun owners have had enough of having to justify our existence to a bunch of uninformed, oft-hysterical people – as though we’ve done something wrong – each and every time the media decides to sensationalize the hell out of a mass-shooting event and thereby provide fresh appeals-to-emotion for the anti-gun lobby to use.

We’ve had enough of that same media ignoring stories like Great Mills in favor of Parkland because the latter was more tragic and deadly and therefore more useful for pushing their agenda. In fact, we’ve had more than enough of the media and the left making political hay out of the still-warm bodies of the slain after each and every mass-shooting event.

We’ve had enough of proposing real and workable solutions to the over-hyped problem of mass-shootings and school-shootings, only to have those rebuffed because they didn’t call for sweeping new government measures and bans, but rather the relaxing of restrictions that keep good people unarmed and vulnerable when those rare events occur.

We’ve had enough of pointing out that the fact there are, at minimum, an average of 67,000 defensive gun uses per year. Against an average of 9-11 thousand firearm homicides, calling for more gun control is sheer madness. Further, some studies put the estimated number of DGUs as high as 2.2 million annually; but, since most don’t get reported to authorities (because no shots are fired), it’s impossible to get an exact number. Needless to say, the cold, hard facts are clear: guns in the hands of civilians prevent exponentially more harm than they cause.

We’ve had enough of having to defend the NRA against hyperbolic charges that it is somehow a “terrorist organization” that benefits from and encourages murder and mayhem.

We’ve had enough of pointing out that comparing the USA to European countries is asinine as many of those countries restricted or banned the civilian ownership of firearms from the outset – none of their civilian populations were given centuries to amass whatever arms they wanted as Americans were. That’s why there’s 6.6 guns per 100 Britons today. There’s something like 125 guns per 100 Americans presently. Wondering why there’s more shooting deaths in the USA than in European countries makes as much sense as wondering why more people die of black mamba bite in sub-Saharan Africa than do in Nova Scotia where black mamba snakes don’t live. And, you’d have an easier time ridding Africa of black mambas than you will getting all – or even many – of the half-billion guns Americans own away from us.

We’ve had enough of having to explain that criminals don’t obey laws – that’s why they’re called “criminals;” they commit crimes. Ergo, passing news laws restricting guns will only affect those of us who aren’t inclined to criminally misuse a gun. We also won’t stand for being made a criminal by the stroke of a pen while we mind our own business – the way gun bans work. We won’t move to get on the “right” side of a wrong law.

Finally, we’ve had enough of having to explain that there have always been, throughout history, a percentage of humans born each year whom just aren’t cut out for civilization. Unlike the old days, we can’t just kick them out of the community and banish them to roam the wilds on their own – the “wilds” are now all “federal land” and they’ll get you for trespassing. So, instead, we just banish them in every other way until they snap. Or, in the case of Tuesday’s tragedy, until an external stressor causes them to relinquish control over their emotions and they allow themselves to rationalize committing premeditated murder. There’s no act of congress that can stop such people being born nor prevent them from eventually – or indeed sometimes inevitably – coming off the spool.

Frankly, we’ve had enough indeed with having to answer for atrocities none of us committed.