When people write op-eds, many are anything but experts in the topic they’re discussing. They may be educated to some degree on the topic, but they’re still laymen and women. This is especially true about guns, as we’ve all seen.

A prime example comes from a Connecticut publication, where the writer of this op-ed clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Mass shootings and gun violence are fundamental American phenomena; we are utterly riddled with and by both of them. Over the last four decades, the United States has suffered through 158 mass shootings in the Sandy Hook and Uvalde sense; these are indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by guns. But defined more broadly as any incident where four or more people are killed or injured by guns, we have experienced 3,500 mass shootings in the 10 years since Sandy Hook. Today, the leading cause of death among children is guns. Despite the horrific stamp mass shootings leave on our collective psyche, most deaths attributed to gun violence are tied to incidents of domestic-violence, suicides and smaller-scale homicides. Still, mass shootings occur at such an absurd frequency that between 2013 and 2020 America has experienced just one full calendar week without one .

…

In the face of mass addiction to guns and the pandemic of gun-related violence, we have failed to do much of anything to combat either. The political cycle is a familiar one: mass shooting; 24 hours of news coverage; thoughts and prayers for the victims; a renewed vigor to finally take legislative action; lobbying and political pressure to do nothing, to dribble out the clock until everyone moves on; and finally, and inevitably, inaction. I’m just 31 years old and I’ve seen this cycle play out over and over again.

So “gun violence” is an American problem, but it’s also a pandemic?

Does the author know what a pandemic actually is?

Honestly, this isn’t the point of me writing this. At most, this warrants a tweet. Yet it sets the stage for what comes next. After all, if he can’t tell what a pandemic is despite it being in the news daily for almost three years now, how can he understand guns?

Well, he can’t.

The Second Amendment reads, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” I remember the first time I really read this amendment and was shocked about how sparse it was. Nowhere, of course, does it guarantee the right to military-grade assault rifles, or silencers, or bump stocks, or high-capacity magazines, or hollow-point bullets. And yet the mere suggestion, the mere hint, of curtailing these obviously absurd aspects of civilian gun enhancements is met with a Second Amendment-infused tantrum.

First, it actually does guarantee all of those things. It’s in the part that says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” An infringement isn’t an elimination. It’s far milder, which means anything that inhibits our ability to keep and bear arms is an infringement.

But then again, this is someone who apparently thinks hollow-point rounds are a bad thing.

Hollow points, which terrify the typical anti-gunner, mushroom on impact and create a larger wound channel than full-metal jackets. This is why people like the author wet themselves over the idea of ordinary Americans having such rounds.

But that’s also why they’re ideal for self-defense. It makes it easier to stop the bad guy.

FMJ ammo may well go right threw the bad guy…and through the wall and into some innocent bystander. See, that’s how I know this author doesn’t know anything about what he’s trying to pontificate on. If he did, he’d understand that overpenetration is a problem and hollow points are the solution to them. That’s why law enforcement uses them almost exclusively.

The idea that they’re not only not protected but should be restricted is how you know the author is an unserious person screeching about a subject they know nothing about.

Which would be fine if some didn’t hold up some of this as being a valid argument.

Make no mistake, though. It’s not.