What happened Friday was awful. Unfortunately, because a firearm was used, we’ll inevitably continue to debate the tools used rather than the mentality behind such attacks.

It’s also because of this that gun rights organizations need to speak out in the aftermath of such an attack. Friday, Gun Owners of American issued a statement about the attack.

Gun Owners of America Statement on Santa Fe, Texas Shooting

Springfield, VA – Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (GOA) Erich Pratt stated the following after the tragic shooting at the high school in Santa Fe, Texas:

“Everyone at GOA grieves with those who lost loved ones. Our prayers go out for families of those affected. It’s heartbreaking to see innocent lives lost.

“Sadly, the media is focused on this shooting, and they continue to do so because they will use it to advance their gun control agenda. Some outlets are continuing to cite the fake number of mass shootings in 2018, which was refuted by The Washington Post after the tragic Parkland shooting.

“The mainstream media has ignored potential mass shootings that were stopped by armed personal, such as the school resource officers who stopped shooters in Maryland and Illinois.

“GOA remains firmly committed to protecting our Second Amendment rights and urges Congress to pass the ‘Safe Students Act’ to repeal gun-free schools, and for Texas to pass Constitutional Carry.”

Now, part of the reason the media focused on the shooting is because of the old news adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” A school shooting will always draw media attention, and part of that is because people want to know what happened. That’s not going to change, even if the media suddenly did a 180 on guns.

That said, it was almost as if the media was salivating at another school shooting, only to be visibly disappointed that the weapon wasn’t an AR-15, not to mention that none of the anti-gun proposals being floated around would have done one thing to stop this shooting.

It’s not surprising, though. Let’s be honest, we all know the current proposals on the table are useless. This shooting illustrated just how little they would do to prevent school shootings. And by “little,” I mean “jack squat.”

The problem is something deeper into the psychology of these shootings. Luckily, we have a handful of mass shooters who surrendered. We need a psychological study of these people to begin to delve into their pathology. We know that blaming the guns is stupid. However, blaming nebulous concepts as “mental illness” is useless, too. There are millions of students suffering from things like depression who would never even raise a finger to hurt their fellow students.

No, we need to understand what makes these people tick, what the common factors are, and continue to build a profile while trying to find ways to curtail these horrible crimes. The more we can learn, the more we can stop these attacks from happening.

In the meantime, let’s remember that it was a couple of good guys with guns that wounded the attacker and ultimately convinced him to surrender.