❝❝Alright.

Some regular readers know that I am a libertarian. Libertarians are supposed to be among the "gun nuts," right? I loathe guns, and the gun rights are the last part of libertarianism I embraced. I do not own a gun. I do not want a gun. I would prefer that no one did.

I am not going to go into gun rights here. It's not really on topic. It's not what I would like you to think about.

I would like you to think about how the local government who people trusted to keep those Florida kids safe failed. The superintendent of schools and the school board who set policies that prevented the shooter from being helped while there was still time. The local sheriff's department who did their best Keystone Cops imitation.

I would like you to think about this shooting and all the other mass shootings that happened in "gun free" zones. Apparently "gun free" means lots of unarmed targets ready to be made into victims.

Most importantly, I want you to remember that someone had to pull the trigger. There are an estimated 100 to 150 million gun owners in this country. Most of them do not wake up and think "Who can I shoot today?" Mass shootings are the exception, not the rule.

There are facts I could throw in here. Like how most homicides in this country are committed by handguns. How the jurisdictions with the toughest gun laws also have the highest gun crime rates. How the states that allow concealed carry have some of the lowest violent crime rates.

But I want you to remember one thing. Somebody had to pull the trigger. That somebody would have been there with or without a gun.

---

I did not suggest putting guns in schools.

While it is probably mythical, we have at least one story of three thousand people being killed by boxcutters. Anyone who paid attention in high school chemistry can make some pretty lethal weapons with items from a hardware or grocery store. One of the most devastating bombs in American history was made from gasoline diesel and nitromethane soaked fertilizer.

Remember, the first thing I mentioned was the failure of the local government. And they did fail. More than fifty times in this one case before the shooting started.

I wanted you to think about "gun free" zones because they don't work, be it a nightclub or a post office or a high school. The alternative may not be guns in schools, but we need to come up with something.

The thing is, we don't know what works. We know that something changed in American society.

I'm getting tired of the same arguments on both sides. It's why I didn't want to make this about gun rights. It's why I resent how some kids are being used as political tools to express thoughts that no one must dissent from.

It's why I think it's stupid to blame the gun when we know the shooter was beyond broken.❞❞

NeoNotes are the selected comments that I made on other boards, in email, or in response to articles where I could not respond directly.

Tags: guns ∙ gun laws ∙ Keystone Cops ∙ Florida ∙ local government ∙ mass shootings ∙ gun ownership ∙ homicide ∙ concealed carry