There has been a gun sales surge ever since the early days of the pandemic. From the moment we knew it was coming to our shores, people started buying guns. The buying hasn’t stopped either.

This has been good news for the firearm industry.

However, anti-gunners have been freaking out about this for some time now. That freak out isn’t slowing down, apparently, with news outlets proclaiming that “gun sales and a mental health crisis… are seen as risk factors in school shootings.”

Students in many US states are just returning to classrooms after months of remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic – but the move back has come with an unfortunate uptick in gun violence.

From the first hours of Thursday, it felt like Groundhog Day –– at 7:00 am (1200 GMT) an Army trainee carrying a rifle hijacked a bus full of elementary school students near Fort Jackson, South Carolina for reasons unknown, before letting them go unharmed.

Arrested a short time later, the 23-year-old man was charged with 19 counts of kidnapping, carjacking and other crimes.

“Probably one of the scariest calls that we can get in law enforcement … is that a school bus has been hijacked with kids on it with someone with a gun. And that’s what we had this morning,” local sheriff Leon Lott told the ABC station.

Then, on the other side of the country in Idaho, at about 9:00 am (1500 GMT) a girl in sixth grade – meaning she is about 11 or 12 – took a gun out of her backpack and started shooting. Two students and a staff member were injured.

A teacher disarmed the girl and she was taken into custody. Her motive remains unknown.

…

The incidents are reported by local media, but they do not make national headlines.

Only a deadly shooting spree, like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida in February 2018 (17 dead), sparks a shockwave.

“No other high income country experiences or tolerates constant school shootings,” tweeted Shannon Watts, the founder of the Moms Demand Action movement against gun violence.

Except at least one of those incidents involved the theft of a military rifle. The others mentioned were from firearms likely stolen from their parents.

The author tries to make a point that the mental health issues stemming from COVID-19 and the gun sales surge create a dangerous environment. However, they fail to show their work.

See, while gun sales are increasing, they failed to show that any of these incidents were newly purchased firearms. The gun sale surge exists, but were any of these firearms purchased as part of that surge?

Further, even if they were, the sale of these guns isn’t the issue and never has been because they were purchased lawfully by someone who still hasn’t broken the law. They’re the victims, really, because their guns were taken and then misused.

People are constantly going on and on about how we have too many guns, but then they say they don’t want to take our guns. They fail to address guns in criminal hands but instead focus on those firearms being sold lawfully.

With this story, desperate to try and link increased gun sales to school violence, it’s almost sad. You’d think that people would understand that correlation doesn’t equal causation, yet they don’t. Then again, they still think gun control works.