The Arapahoe High School Shooting and Gun-Control Politics

gun-control-debate-300x226

 

On Friday, December 13th, a student at Arapahoe High School in Colorado went to school intending to shoot the school’s debate team coach and kill as many other people as possible. He was reportedly armed with a shotgun, explosives, and a machete. The usual suspects, mainly CNN’s Piers Morgan, immediately began pointing to this incident as yet another reason why more gun control laws are needed.

Morgan, specifically, took to Twitter to bemoan the failure of the United States to do anything to stop school shootings.

Why is anyone surprised by more school shootings in America? Absolutely nothing has been done to prevent them since Sandy Hook.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) December 13, 2013

Setting aside the fact that Morgan tweeted this before any information on the shooting, besides that it happened, was available, the statement is factually incorrect.

Colorado actually “did something” after the Sandy Hook shootings.

They instituted “universal background checks” and limited magazine capacity. These were two of the policies gun control advocates pushed for after Sandy Hook. Many, like Morgan, claimed that they weren’t looking to ban all guns, and that “common sense” solutions like these would stop future school shootings.

They were wrong.

In fact, the one policy Morgan and his ilk decried as ridiculous seems to be the only thing that prevented the Arapahoe High School shooter from killing all the people he planned on killing: Armed people in the school.

When an armed school resource officer entered the room, Pierson believed he was cornered and turned his gun on himself, Robinson said.  The entire attack lasted approximately 80 seconds and was captured by security cameras.

In this latest incident we have the entire gun control narrative turned upside down:

  • Universal background checks are in place in Colorado.
  • Magazine capacity limits are in place in Colorado.

Neither one of these things prevented the shooting. The shooter had a shotgun, so magazine capacity limits did not apply. He bought it legally. He had explosives which are already banned. He had a machete. The only thing that prevented the shooting from becoming a massacre was the existence of an armed official in the school who confronted the gunman. This is an inconvenient truth for the gun control crowd. You can expect them not to draw this story out for very long because the facts of the case don’t bolster the policy outcome they’re hoping to enact.

There’s also another problem. The deranged shooter happens to be a pretty outspoken Leftist. The Denver Post did a profile of the shooter on Friday evening.

Thomas Conrad, who had an economics class with Pierson, described him as very opinionated.

“He was exuberant, I guess,” Conrad said. “A lot of people picked on him, but it didn’t seem to bother him.”

In one Facebook post, Pierson attacks the philosophies of economist Adam Smith, who through his invisible-hand theory pushed the notion that the free market was self-regulating. In another post, he describes himself as “Keynesian.”

“I was wondering to all the neoclassicals and neoliberals, why isn’t the market correcting itself?” he wrote. “If the invisible hand is so strong, shouldn’t it be able to overpower regulations?”

Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing “you republicans are so cute” and posting an image that reads: “The Republican Party: Health Care: Let ‘em Die, Climate Change: Let ‘em Die, Gun Violence: Let ‘em Die, Women’s Rights: Let ‘em Die, More War: Let ‘em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?”

Carl Schmidt and Brendon Mendelson, both seniors at Arapahoe High, knew Pierson. They said he had political views that were “outside the mainstream,” but they did not elaborate.

The text above is actually a revised version of the original article. See, when it was first published, the shooter’s schoolmate was quoted as saying that the shooter was an “outspoken Socialist.” But this, once again, didn’t fit the narrative and was watered down. The reason for taking out the term “Socialist” is a doozy and worth reading. If this kid were a hardcore 2nd amendment proponent, you can bet money that there wouldn’t have been any attempt to “avoid labels.” Ace of Spades blogger, Gabriel Malor, summed it up nicely.

This is how the politics of gun control always plays out. Gun control advocates in the media jump on a story, distort facts, push a narrative, and then push for policy that doesn’t actually address the facts of the case they’re using as an example of what happens when those policies aren’t enacted. Time and time again, after the facts become known, they willfully ignore that the facts don’t fit their agenda and plow ahead anyway. There’s never any accountability. There’s never any fact checking. There’s never a time when they go back and analyze what they got wrong (everything) and there is never a course correction. Never an attempt to get the facts right before pushing for policy.

Never.

As of this writing, a young girl is in critical condition because a deranged loser decided to shoot and kill people in his high school because he was kicked off his debate team.

Our prayers are with her and everyone else who was affected by this act of a madman.

We can all learn from what happened and strive to stop senseless acts like these. But our media, dominated by agenda driven individuals, makes this harder, not easier.