It never fails.
Anytime there’s a mass shooting anywhere in the nation, we’ll get the “survivors” stepping up to tell us how this is proof that we need gun control.
In fact, people would be shocked to learn that some mass shooting survivors aren’t fans of gun control at all. They recognize that the problem lies in people, not things; that all the gun control in the world won’t stop someone determined to kill as many people as possible.
Part of that is because the mainstream media lionizes people like David Hogg while pretending people like this don’t exist.
“It’s maddening that we go straight to a gun control debate,” Evan Todd, a survivor of the notorious 1999 Columbine High School shooting, told me on this week’s episode of “Higher Ground With Billy Hallowell” podcast (subscribe here). “Because, in the end, that will not solve the problem.”
Mr. Todd knows firsthand what true depravity and wickedness look like. He was inside the library at his school in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, when two student gunmen slaughtered 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves.
Not only was Mr. Todd shot during the ordeal, but he was also the last person to speak with the gunmen, somehow convincing them not to take his life.
Since the shooting, however, Mr. Todd has emerged as a vocal proponent of the Second Amendment, departing from comments and proclamations made by other mass shooting survivors who have vociferously pushed politicians for stricter gun control measures.
For Mr. Todd, the answers to our gun violence woes are more rooted in school safety than in cracking down on constitutional freedoms.
“The first thing that we should be saying as parents is [that] we need to secure and protect our schools,” Mr. Todd said. “That is the first step we should be taking.”
For the record, I agree with Todd on this.
What’s more, this shouldn’t be a controversial position. Even if we enacted every bit of gun control pushed by groups like Giffords, Everytown, and Brady, our kids would still be vulnerable. Deep down inside, I think most gun control advocates know this, too.
They just can’t seem to bring themselves to acknowledge it.
In my time here at Bearing Arms, I’ve written about mass shootings all over the world. I’ve talked about them in places like the UK and Russia, both very different nations yet both with strict gun control rules in place.
So it always strikes me as odd that we’re told that the issue here is purely one of insufficient gun control laws.
Todd survived a mass shooting. He survived one of the most infamous mass shootings of all time, and unlike many so-called survivors, he was actually shot. He’s someone who, if he pushed an anti-gun agenda, would likely be on our television screens for weeks after a mass shooting.
He’s someone we’d be told we have to listen to on this.
Yet because he’s saying school security is more important, that we need to make our schools tougher targets so potential mass murderers will have to look elsewhere, he won’t be on MSNBC or CNN.
It’s a shame, too, because school security should be something we can all get behind, even as we debate gun control.
