Iowa governor says gun control not the answer

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)

In Iowa, a very pro-gun state, there have been calls for new gun control measures following the shooting death of a teenager in a driveby.

It’s not particularly surprising, really. Nor is the fact that there’s zero evidence that anything they’re calling for would have even inconvenienced the killers in this case, either.

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Luckily, Iowa’s governor is unmoved by their anti-gun histrionics.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds had a message Wednesday on the deadly drive-by shooting outside of East High School last week.

At an event Wednesday, Reynolds called the shooting a heartbreaking tragedy but argued stricter gun laws are not the answer.

“The tragedy is our educational system is letting these kids down. They should have been in school. We should be figuring out resources to help them stay there,” Reynolds said.

Instead, she says the focus should be on keeping kids in the classroom.

“Let’s figure out how we get these kids in school, get them the education they need and set them up to be successful. Not set them up for jail or a life of crime. And so that’s where we’re going to continue to focus. We have gun laws. We have laws on the books right now for guns, and those weren’t accessed legally,” Reynolds said.

Of course, some Democrats blasted the governor for blaming public schools. These same Democrats apparently don’t see the irony of being upset over the governor’s comments while trying to infringe on constitutionally protected rights.

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Then again, if they had any hint of how idiotic they were being, they wouldn’t be that anti-gun in the first place.

Look, I can’t say that Reynolds is right or not. I don’t know enough about Iowa’s public schools to begin to guess.

But I do know that none of the suspects arrested were old enough to buy handguns lawfully. They’re also apparently young enough no law-abiding citizen would have sold them the guns thinking they were old enough to own them.

That tells us they got those guns through illegal means, which means gun control laws would have had absolutely no impact.

After all, the laws against murder clearly didn’t work, either.

Gun control is clearly not the answer, so why not look at the public schools. The alleged killers were school-age but were clearly not in school that day if they were enrolled at all, so maybe the governor has a point here. If nothing else, it’s a good idea to try and improve the schools anyway, so what’s the downside?

I find it funny that the governor is talking about improving one of the Democrats’ sacred cows–public schools–and they’re angry about it.

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Then again, consistency isn’t normally a strong suit for these particular folks, so Reynolds shouldn’t really worry about them.

Further, while this shooting was no doubt horrible, it was also a random act of violence that could have happened anywhere. Because it was so close to a school, though, suddenly these lawmakers are interested. It really tells you how little they really care about all of this when they can’t make a political statement with it.

Just sayin’.

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