The shooting at a St. Louis high school left two innocent people dead. It also resulted in the death of the turdnugget who started the whole mess.

Such shootings are beyond awful tragedies and they make an impact on the lives of everyone touched by them. It’s unsurprising that some would want gun control in the aftermath.

There are still a lot of questions about how the killer obtained his weapon, but that’s not stopping some people. They want gun control now.

A former police chief was among eight local St. Louis County mayors who called for tighter gun regulations Tuesday during a meeting with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Trudy Busch Valentine.

“We have probably the most liberal gun laws in this state, in the country, and it’s scary that anybody can get a gun,” Florissant Mayor Tim Lowery, a former police chief, said Tuesday during the roundtable of mayors at a Llywelyn’s Pub in Webster Groves.

“We can certainly see the effects of that yesterday. It’s scary. We’re having a hard time protecting kids in our schools.”

The meeting, which included mayors of some of the county’s largest cities and chief economic drivers, came a day after a deadly school shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts and Collegiate School of Medicine & Bioscience high schools, which share a south St. Louis campus, left three dead, including the shooter.

Look, I get the desire, and Missouri is known for being a very pro-gun state, especially in recent years.

However, let’s keep what happened earlier this week in perspective.

Yes, it was an awful shooting and a tragedy that claimed two innocent lives–I refuse to lump the killer in with the victims when talking about those killed–but there’s little reason to believe gun control would have done anything.

As noted on Thursday, the killer’s parents had the gun in question removed from the home, but he got it again anyway. He was determined to have that firearm, so just how would Missouri suddenly emulating Illinois prevent this tragedy?

Especially since Illinois’s gun laws didn’t stop Highland Park from happening, nor did New York’s prevent Buffalo.

Right now, there are too many questions left unanswered to even begin to have a meaningful debate on the subject of gun control, mass shootings, what happened in St. Louis, or much of anything else.

Yet it’s unlikely we’ll suddenly find some area where a law is actually needed that would absolutely prevent another mass shooting from happening.

Especially since this really doesn’t rise to the level of “mass shooting.”

That’s a good thing.

So these mayors can call for whatever they want. They also get a single for state and federal legislators they can use to support candidates they agree with, same as everyone else. They’re free to use it however they see fit.

What they don’t have, though, is the power to decide laws for the rest of the state or nation, and if they’re going off half-cocked like this, that’s definitely for the best.