Following the Parkland, Florida, shooting, gun advocates have raised a number of arguments that surface again and again after massacres in the United States: Israel is full of guns, yet massacres are unheard of; gun restrictions will only disarm law-abiding citizens, giving violent criminals free rein; only an armed, law-abiding citizen might stop an active shooter; carrying weapons is a constitutional right. These arguments have some persuasive power but are ultimately false and misleading. It is important to refute them, once and for all.
The Parkland school massacre follows a familiar pattern. A confused and troubled youngster shunned by society mows down his schoolmates with an upgraded semi-automatic rifle. The resulting scene echoes dozens before it: boys and girls, riddled with bullets, lying lifeless on a bloodstained floor.
A short while later, the scene of the crime is festooned with flowers. Children, parents and relatives grieve and weep. Progressives call for stricter gun control. The National Rifle Association and its cronies are silent at first, before wheeling out the usual rhetoric: guns don’t kill, people do; education is the solution; one armed, responsible adult would have neutralized the active shooter.
For a while, the nation is in an uproar. The president promises to do something – and yet nothing happens. As the rage subsides, the media move on to other things. The conveyor belt of massacre is left to keep turning: Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Las Vegas, Parkland...
YET THIS time it is difficult to remain indifferent to the protest of the high school students and the “March for Our Lives.”
Even US President Donald Trump initiated some half-hearted measures: banning accessories that can upgrade semi-automatic guns to automatics and raising the minimum age of gun holding from 18 to 21. Then, being Trump, he changed his
