Any of these proposed restrictions or bans, would they change ANY of the school shootings or other shootings that have occurred.
I'll help you out. Here's the
2018 school shootings so far:
(1) January 9, 2018 Forest City, Iowa, 0 killed, 0 wounded. A man shot a pellet gun at a school bus full of children, shattering a window. No one was injured.[541]
(2) January 20, 2018 Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1 killed, 0 wounded. A student was fatally shot at a party at 1 a.m. on the campus of Wake Forest University.[541]
(3) January 22, 2018 Italy, Texas, 0 killed, 1 wounded. A 16-year-old male student fired at a 15-year-old female classmate that he had briefly dated in the cafeteria of Italy High School. The gunman left the school immediately after opening fire and was arrested.[542][543][544]
(4) January 22, 2018 New Orleans, Louisiana, 0 killed, 1 wounded. Shots were fired from a truck in the parking lot of NET Charter High School, targeting a crowd of students during lunch time. One student was slightly injured, apparently from injuries unrelated to gunfire. One person was arrested in connection with the shooting.[541]
(5) January 23, 2018 Marshall County, Kentucky, 2 killed, 18 wounded. Marshall County High School shooting: A 15-year-old male student shot 16 people in the lobby at Marshall County High School and caused non-gunshot injuries to 4 others. Two 15-year-old students died: one killed at the scene, another died of wounds at Vanderbilt Medical Center. [545][546][547]
(6) February 1, 2018 Los Angeles, California, 0 killed, 5 wounded. Two 15-year-old students, a boy and a girl, were shot and injured inside a classroom at Sal Castro Middle School, which shares a campus with Belmont High School. Three other people suffered injuries unrelated to gunfire. A 12-year-old girl was arrested and charged with negligent discharge of a firearm.[548]
(7) February 5, 2018 Oxon Hill, Maryland, 0 killed, 1 wounded. A student was taken to hospital after exiting Oxon Hill High School and going to speak to individuals in a vehicle who then attempted to rob, and subsequently shot and wounded him in the school's parking lot. Two other students were arrested and charged with attempted murder and robbery.[549]
(8) February 14, 2018 Parkland, Florida 17 killed, 14 injured. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting: A 19-year-old former student who had been expelled began shooting students and staff members with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after pulling a fire alarm. 17 people were killed, and fourteen others were injured. The suspect, Nikolas Cruz, blended in with the crowd of fleeing students and was arrested in a residential area of neighboring Coral Springs after walking away from the school.[550] He is facing charges of murder and attempted murder.[551]
[NOTE: the school knew he was dangerous in advance, and expelled him but did not notify law enforcement.
Local police/sheriffs were warned with over 40 calls to visit the house and about Cruz.
The FBI was given 2 tips they did not follow up on or warn the Broward Sheriffs office, or the Douglas High School officials.
Cruz obtained all these weapons legally, after passing a background check on each weapon.]
I don't see how the proposed restrictions would have prevented even one of these incidents.
The most similar incident is the
Sandy Hook, CT elementary school shooting. And that was 6 years ago, back in 2012. (Not exactly hundreds of similar cases, and so far as I know, Nikolas Cruz is the lone case with an assault weapon.) In the Adam Lanza case, the guns did not belong to Adam Lanza, so again, no background check or potential seizure of guns for mental illness problems would have changed the outcome, because he did not own or have clear access to weapons. And unlike Nikolas Cruz, there were no calls to the school, local police or FBI warning Lanza had any advance possibility of shooting up a school.
So far, the push for better background checks doesn't bother me, because it's just pushing for enforcement of laws that were already on the books, and were not being adequately done as they were created to.
I also don't have a problem with assault weapons being restricted to people over 21. My only concern is that this is a slow push toward greater and more restrictive bans. If someone shoots up a school or military base or university or work office with either an assault weapon or some other weapon, then there will be pushes for more restrictions beyond the present ones. So these current proposals are only a feel-good exercise for political show.
Unless... the whole point is actually to establish a beachhead, to expand from and to rationalize further restrictions when future random shooting incidents occur. The restrictions proposed presently will change absolutely nothing, except laying the first cornerstone for further gun restrictions later. The deceitful pattern the Left uses to advance everything, whether campaign finance reform, encouraging illegal immigration, motor-voter laws that allow illegals to lie about their illegal status and vote (vote DEMOCRAT!), Obamacare, environmental restrictions, or other authoritarian encroachments on freedom.
Always for Democrat progressives, the goal is consolidating their power, not actually helping people.
