The horrors of Uvalde won’t be leaving us anytime soon. That’s a bit of a mixed blessing. After all, we shouldn’t forget what happened at Robb Elementary School. Those who were killed deserve more than to be forgotten by the general public.

Yet we’re also going to have to discuss them in the context of gun control for a long time to come.

Right now, the Uvalde parents are trying to pressure the Texas state legislature to adopt gun control, and it doesn’t look promising for them.

The Uvalde parents who lost their children in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary waited over 13 hours on Wednesday to testify in favor of a bill that would raise the age for someone to purchase a a semi-automatic rifle.

HB2744 would increase the age from 18 to 21 for someone to purchase a semi-automatic rifle with exceptions for peace officers, military members and those honorably discharged.

Family members told lawmakers if HB2744 was law last May, then the gunman would not been able to purchase the weapon he used. The Uvalde gunman who killed 21 people at an elementary school nearly a year ago was able to purchase and use two AR-style rifles and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition only eight days after his 18th birthday.

Despite 70% of Texans supporting legislation to raise the age to purchase a military style weapon, lawmakers believe the bill will likely face an uphill battle against Republicans to get out of House Committee hearings.

We’ve talked ad nauseum about how useless a lot of this polling is, so I won’t get into that.

What I do what to talk about is what the Uvalde parents are trying to accomplish. I don’t agree with them, but I understand why they’re trying to do this.

They lost their kids, for crying out loud. Their children were gunned down by a freaking maniac and that is going to play a factor in how you view a whole lot of things going forward in your life. I questioned my pro-gun beliefs after losing a friend for half a second. I can only imagine it would have been worse if it had been one of my kids.

We need to remember that these are generally going to be good people who are trying to do something in an effort to deal with their grief.

We also need to remember that, to people dealing with this, just screaming about your rights isn’t exactly productive, either.

The truth of the matter, though, is that there’s little reason to curtail the rights of an entire group that did nothing wrong because of what happened that day. Especially considering the law enforcement failures likely played a far larger factor than a lack of restriction on who can buy guns.

Let’s remember that there was no police response time. The cops basically chased the guy into the school. They were already there.

The problem is that they waited outside while a maniac was able to slaughter innocent children.

Uvalde wasn’t a failure of insufficient gun control, it was a failure of law enforcement to respond appropriately. We now know based on the recordings they had that the problem wasn’t a misunderstanding of the situation, but fear.

While I have sympathy for what they must still be going through, these parents lack a clear understanding of the issues at play. They’re grieving families. They’re not experts on anything except what they’ve lost. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, either.

But when you’re pushing for laws without any apparent understanding of not just the full impact of the laws you advocating but also the surrounding factors that led to the death of your loved one, you shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t just bow and scrape to do as you wish.