The media loves to hype up students who ask for gun control, particularly soon after any kind of mass shooting at a school. The idea is that these are basically stakeholders, so we should listen to them.

That’s likely what’s behind a report out of Nebraska where students are doing just that.

A group of parents, students and teachers joined advocate groups Thursday at the State Capitol to call on senators to take action on gun control in Nebraska.

Members of Nebraskans Against Gun Violence and the Nebraska chapter of Moms Demand Action spoke at the rally, which was held in the capitol’s rotunda. 

This comes on the five-year anniversary of the walkouts, which followed the shooting at Parkland school shooting in Florida.

Organizers said the gun violence problem has only gotten worse for young people in schools.

“Gun violence is the number one cause of death in U.S. children,” Sen. Jane Raybould of Lincoln said.

Oh, that tired statistic.

That’s the one that counts 18- and 19-year-olds as “children.” Nope, nothing suspect there.

Moving on…

Nebraska teachers and students also spoke on how it is affecting people in our state.

“Kids my age shouldn’t have to be concerned about like, you know, their lives and about like where to hide,” Leah Nelson said.

Except, kids your age, especially in Nebraska, don’t have to.

In 2021, there were a grand total of 49 murders in the entire state. To put it in perspective, that’s less than twice Chicago’s per capita murder rate. For the entire state, Nebraska had fewer murders than a 200,000-person sample from the Windy City.

It should be noted that most of those seem to come from Omaha, versus the rest of the state.

I’m going to take a stab in the dark and argue that Nelson probably doesn’t have to worry about being murdered.

Even mass shootings aren’t a huge thing in Nebraska. If you define them as three or more people killed in a single instance outside of the home, which is pretty much what people think of as a mass shooting, the only one I’ve found was the 2007 Westroads Mall shooting that claimed eight lives.

So the state isn’t exactly eaten up with stuff like that.

Why?

Well, because it’s Nebraska, that’s why.

Nebraska is a fairly rural state, for one thing. It also tends to have a strong gun culture in most parts of the state. As a result, it’s likely that potential mass shooters figure they’re going to get killed before they can do much of anything, so they instead put those plans aside.

They’re still sick and want to hurt people, but their goal of mass slaughter remains unrealized.

The state’s fairly generous understanding of gun rights isn’t making these students unsafe. It’s doing the opposite. These students want gun control, but they should instead be celebrating gun rights instead.

Unfortunately, if they did that, they wouldn’t make the news. No one in the media cares about students recognizing that gun control isn’t keeping anyone safe, after all.