Following the shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the state began its move toward embracing gun control. What had been a state that fully embraced guns suddenly became a new California or New Jersey.

Alright, maybe they’re not quite that bad, but they’ve been working on it. They’ve passed a number of anti-gun measures including universal background checks and red flag laws.

Yet it seems that Denver is having a problem with guns in its public schools.

Denver Public Schools superintendent Alex Marrero is concerned about violence and guns on campus. During Monday evening’s school board meeting, Marrero said there have been 34 incidents on or near DPS campuses this year, involving both real and fake guns.

Marrero said in eight of those cases, students brought those weapons on campus, “I’m thankful for students coming forward but I also know this is an important ticking time bomb. Eight of those situations are eight too many.”

Marrero argues this isn’t a local issue but is instead a problem nationwide.

And, as someone who sees the headlines every day, he’s not wrong. It happens all over the nation and Denver is no exception.

However, it should be noted that Denver is in a state that has many of the laws meant to keep guns out of the hands of school kids. If those laws worked as advertised, this simply shouldn’t happen.

But it does.

See, the criminal types don’t care about gun laws, and I mean any gun laws. They see no issue with arming children so they can carry guns to school or use them to shoot rivals. They have no qualms about it.

All those laws? The ones meant to restrict guns? Yeah, they restrict them alright, but not for these people. They only restrict law-abiding citizens who don’t represent a threat in the first place. The bad guys will keep doing what they want.

That’s kind of their thing.

Now, I’m not going to tell people that laws should be changed so school kids can bring machine guns to show and tell. But I am going to say that all these restrictions aren’t having the desired effect, in part because they never focus on the actual cause of anything.

These kids are bringing guns to school in part because they’ve been indoctrinated into a culture that celebrates the criminal. They view these kinds of people as rock stars and they want to emulate them. Part of that is carrying a gun illegally.

Then, when they get caught and punished, it doesn’t create a deterrent effect. Instead, it lets them feel powerful; like they’re more a part of that criminal culture than they were. There’s literally nothing you can do to them that won’t make them feel that way.

You have to pull them out of that mindset, and absolutely no one seems to be able to figure out how. That’s outside of my wheelhouse, so I won’t even begin to offer an opinion as to how you do that. Unfortunately, though, those who should have an idea are too busy prattling on about the guns.