On Thursday night, the American public learned two bombshell pieces of information regarding the Parkland, Florida mass shooting. First, we learned that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office was told in November that the Parkland shooter “could be a school shooter in the making” but deputies didn’t bother to write up a report; that report “came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons.” Then, in even more shocking news, we learned that an armed school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School sat outside and waited for four minutes during the six minute attack that ended in the deaths of 17 human beings.
So, here’s what we know.
We know the FBI was warned specifically about the Parkland shooter not once, but twice — and did nothing.
We know the Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the home of the Parkland shooter at least 39 times since 2010.
We know that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office was warned multiple times about the Parkland shooter.
We know that an armed officer was present during the shooting and did nothing — and that JROTC students showed far more courage.
And yet we are told that the solution to mass shootings is for law-abiding citizens to give more authority to the authorities that failed, and to turn over our only way of protecting ourselves?
Why in the world would a single law-abiding gun owner hand over his or her weapon to the same authorities that did nothing to protect the children of Parkland? Why would a single law-abiding gun owner turn over his or her capacity for self-defense to people who were incapable of defending children at every step of the way?
And why in the world should we blame the NRA, which literally had nothing to do with Parkland, for the failures of every institutional barrier to a massacre? Why should we blame law-abiding gun owners who didn’t shoot up kids for the failures of those who are paid to do stop evil monsters like the Parkland shooter? Why should we take Sheriff Steve Israel seriously when he blames lack of gun control, Dana Loesch, and the NRA, rather than his own radical incompetence and the radical incompetence of those under his authority?
Children are dead not because millions of good citizens own AR-15s, but because dozens of pathetic incompetents and cowards in a position to do something instead did nothing. All the misdirection in the world isn’t going to change that inconvenient fact.