The anti-gun left is trying as hard as they can to spread the blame for the Apalachee High School shooting beyond those charged with carrying out or enabling the attack. Bloomberg-funded "researcher" Daniel Webster, for instance, says the firearms industry is partly to blame. 

To sell more guns, the gun industry pushes “guns make you more manly” as do some gun rights advocates. Colin Gray bears some responsibility for the shooting, but the horrible idea to give a 14 yr old an AR-15 to make him more masculine isn’t original. https://t.co/pz3tM2ja4o https://t.co/deLGpHO8Gi

— Daniel W. Webster (@DanielWWebster1) September 10, 2024

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Francis Wilkinson, meanwhile, wants to pin the blame on the elephant. In his latest column, Wilkson truncactes a statement by J.D. Vance to accuse the Republican vice-presidential candidate of saying we can't do anything to prevent school shootings (when in fact Vance said "we have to deal with it" and talked about school security measures). 

Wilkinson then uses the straw man he constructed as a pinata, bashing Republicans for their "moral depravity" by refusing to get on the gun control bandwagon. 

A wealthy, technologically advanced society that declares “nothing can be done” when quite a lot can be done is making a statement about its hierarchy of values. In many locales, including Georgia, guns, and the men who cherish them, are higher on the list than children and those who cherish them.

In an effort to cast mass murder in a more negative light and assign responsibility for its frequency, anti-violence activists have taken to calling shootings like the one in Georgia “a choice.” As political rhetoric, I don’t know how effective that is. But as a statement of fact, “choice” is indisputable. People in France, for example, choose to make it difficult to commit mass murder with a semi-automatic firearm. People in the state of Georgia, on the other hand, choose to make it very easy.

What a dishonest framing. It's not that countries like France or states like California choose to make it more difficult to commit a crime with a gun, it's that they choose to make it more difficult to lawfully possess one in the naive hope or false promise that in return, criminals will find it more difficult to get ahold of one. 

But Wilkinson only needs to look at the Golden State to see his argument refuted by reality. California led the nation in active shooter incidents last year, even with the "low-hanging policy fruit" like "universal" background checks, a "red flag" law, storage mandates, and a restrictive concealed carry licensing regime that he calls "minor safeguards to protect human life" already in place. 

If gun violence activists want to label mass murder as a policy choice, then what does that say about the policies they're pushing? Clearly they haven't eradicated incidents of mass murder. California had twice as many active shooter incidents as Texas last year, though it doesn't have twice the population of the Lone Star State. The policy choices California lawmakers have made have made it much more difficult for the average citizen to defend themselves against a violent actor, whether it's an active shooter or someone using their car and a knife to attack total strangers. 

As for Wilkinson's binary choice between "doing nothing" and "aLl ThE gUn CoNtRoL!", there is another way, and it's one that most gun owners I know support. In the vast majority of these incidents of mass violence, the perpetrator makes their intentions known beforehand. In the case of the Apalachee High School shooting suspect, there were apparently multiple red flags raised in the weeks, days, and hours before the shooting took place, including the suspect allegedly talking about a school shooting that morning. The best way to prevent these horrific acts is to take these threats seriously and react accordingly. That may mean taking the student out of school, providing them mental health services, or taking them into custody, but dealing with the individual is a much more effective, and yes, constitutionally sound approach to preventing these crimes. 

It may also mean a gun-owning parent choosing to temporarily remove their firearms from the home until the situation has been resolved. Groups like Hold My Guns and the Gun Shop Project in states like Wisconsin help facilitate the safe and temporary storage of firearms, and we need to see these programs in every state of the country. Based on my conversations with folks like Hold My Guns' Sarah Joy Albrecht, many, if not most, of those involved are opposed to "red flag" laws. Does Wilkinson consider them morally depraved simply because they're taking another approach toward the same goal of public safety; one that doesn't rely on the heavy hand of the state or at the expense of our civil rights, including due process? 

Wilkinson may hate the fact that we have the Second Amendment, but it's not going to be repealed any time soon. More importantly, the tens of millions of lawful gun owners aren't going to simply give up their guns so we can be more like France, especially when the reality is we'd be much more like Mexico; a nearly disarmed populace and heavily armed criminals with a homcide rate about five times that of the United States. 

It's not morally depraved to say that guns aren't going anywhere. It is a fact of life. And it's not morally depraved to support a robust exercise of our Second Amendment rights, any more than it's morally depraved for Wilkinson to support the First Amendment in a world where child pornography, sex trafficking, drug (and weapon) sales, stalking, and harassment take place in the virtual public square (presuming, that is, that Wilkinson does support freedom of speech). 

Yes, some people use guns to commit heinous and horrible acts. Some people use guns to protect and defend their loved ones. Others use guns to put food on the table, or to have fun with friends on a Saturday afternoon. Protecting the civil liberties of a free people while seeking to prevent criminal acts of violence (and punishing them when they take place) isn't an act of moral depravity. Depriving those free people of their rights using the siren song of safety, on the other hand, most certainly is.