In recent months, parents have jumped deep into a handful of issues, and for good reason. After all, when it comes to your child’s health or education, do you really just want to accept the official line from the same government who told you a mask wouldn’t stop the spread of COVID-19 before they started telling you that you had to wear one?

As Americans, it’s our duty to question government officials, and many are doing just that.

However, some seem to think that if you’re a parent worrying about critical race theory or mask and vaccine mandates, you’re worrying about the wrong stuff.

Parents have been showing up in droves at school board meetings across the country to protest mask mandates, vaccine requirements and critical race theory. If only they would get as worked up over what really harms their children: guns.

Of course, he focuses on the Oxford shooter, outlining all the potential failures his parents are alleged to have made, as if that one instance is somehow indicative of anything except this one instance.

He goes on:

Unfortunately, gun ownership and responsibility are not always linked. Second Amendment advocates tout their “right to bear arms” with little understanding of what the phrase originally meant or appreciation of the historical context in which it was written.

The standard weapon for soldiers and civilians in the late 18th century was a smoothbore musket, like the British Brown Bess I use for Revolutionary War reenacting. It takes 30-60 seconds to load, is accurate to 50 yards, and misfires about 20 percent of the time. With a length of more than four feet and a weight of 10 pounds, it is impossible to conceal. No individual ever committed mass murder with a musket. Ownership rights designed for that weapon can hardly be applied to modern firearms without modification.

So, as you can see, he’s hitting all the greatest hits with this op-ed. We’ve addressed that argument repeatedly, of course.

However, there’s a lot he’s completely overlooking, either intentionally or not.

For one thing, guns save a ton more lives every year than are taken with a firearm. That’s true even if you include suicides in the numbers. Guns save a lot of lives. That includes the lives of thousands of children.

Plus, let’s be clear, mandating a child get a vaccine the parents have questions about or wear a mask when the parents have concerns is a “here and now” problem. It’s not some vague threat off in the distance but something they’re seeing right before their eyes. So yeah, they’re going to make it an issue with their school board.

Especially if they’re taking the reasonable precautions that the vast majority of gun owners do, contrary to what the author believes.

So there’s no reason to believe parents are somehow worried about the wrong things. What they’re talking about are things that, if they’re right, put their child at risk here and now. Sure, masks may not cause respiratory problems and the vaccine may well be perfectly safe for young children, but the risk to kids if that’s not the case is so much higher than the vague potential threat posed by the possibility some kid will get his hands on a gun.