Unless, of course, you’re trying to push gun control by pretending school kids are just braver.

Yet, while we continue to pass laws to ensure the safety of motor vehicles, simple measures with broad support — such as safe storage laws for firearms — continue to get bogged down in partisan politics. Gun violence doesn’t discriminate based on party lines. The surge of gun violence has impacted both “red” and “blue” states.

Now, some students are doing what Congress won’t to address the issue.

Students are showing the kind of courage that has been lacking in Washington by speaking up to save lives. A teenager in Florida, for example, reported through our Say Something Anonymous Reporting System that his friend was planning to die by suicide later that day. Because the teen reached out for help, authorities were able to locate the student, who admitted that he had a weapon and a plan for that afternoon. That student got help and is still alive today.

Now, understand that I’m glad the kid got help. I’m glad there was a system that helped him get that help. I don’t feel the government is the only entity that could create such a system, and it’s clear that they’re not.

What the author here fails to understand is that it’s not cowardice that drives people to oppose gun control.

Of course, for someone like him, he thinks it’s self-evident that gun control is the only possible or desirable solution and that the only reason lawmakers won’t pass it is out of fear of the NRA. He can’t fathom the possibility that someone might legitimately disagree that it’s the right approach.

We’ve seen this attempt at shaming lawmakers before. It’s far from a new tactic, but it’s a particularly infuriating one.

See, what’s happening is that the author believes that everyone really thinks gun control works and would make our world better to some degree or another. He especially believes that lawmakers believe that. He just thinks they’re either too afraid of the NRA or of their constituents to pass those laws.

Well, I’ll grant that fear of their constituents may drive some of them. We call that “politics.” After all, he’d be leading the charge if his congressional representatives voted for bills their constituents opposed, probably arguing they should have represented the will of the constituents, not their own.

So that’s kind of hypocritical.

Yet over the last few years, there have been times it looked better politically to side with gun control. They haven’t.

Why?

Because they don’t think it’s the right move. Not because the NRA told them to–that’s a spurious argument and always has been–but because they actually don’t think gun control is the right strategy to deal with various problems.

Couple that with the belief that every Republican lawmaker is a wannabe alpha male with a massive inferiority complex–likely similar to the author’s–and you get some wanker pontificating at The Hill about how kids are somehow braver than members of Congress.

Frankly, it’s a tiresome line.

If you can’t bring something valid to the debate besides vague accusations of cowardice, you should probably turn off your laptop and give up pushing for gun control digitally ever again. You have a right to speak freely, but I’m going to use mine to point out how much of a moron you are.