The Las Vegas shooting was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. It still boggles the mind to think of all the carnage that occurred that night.

No one with a lick of sense thinks of Las Vegas as anything but terrible.

Yet that doesn’t mean some people won’t latch onto the opportunity to advance gun control. After all, they didn’t blink at doing so right after it happened, and as we just saw the anniversary of that day, they’re still doing it.

For example, this is an op-ed out of North Carolina that seeks to use the bodies of those killed that night to push for gun control.

Yesterday, October 1^st, was the sixth anniversary of perhaps the most horrific mass shooting in American history. As if it were a war zone, 58 people were killed and almost 900 more were wounded as a sniper opened fire on attendees at a music festival.

And sadly, as has been the case with other mass shootings in our country, the tragedy gave rise to little in the way of meaningful action, and even spurred the spread of outrageous lies and conspiracy claims from an array of gun rights defenders and cynical political opportunists – including in some instances, prominent and aspiring public figures.

Here in North Carolina, for instance, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson – then still a private citizen – actually sought to cast doubt on the disaster, posting on his Facebook page that he was “SERIOUSLY skeptical” about what happened in Las Vegas. It was a remarkable, irresponsible, and dangerous act for any person – but especially for someone who would soon successfully seek to become one of the highest-ranking elected officials in our state.

A quick break to note that questioning the official narrative of what transpired isn’t illegal. A lot of people were saying that it sounded more like someone had a belt-fed machine gun up in that room versus a number of AR-15s with bump stocks.

Further, Robinson said he was “SERIOUSLY skeptical” of everything he sees. Frankly, that’s not an awful way to look at the news. After all, we’ve all seen the official narrative fall apart well after the fact on a number of stories. Skepticism is a good thing.

But this isn’t about just attacking Robinson.

No, this is about using Las Vegas to push a narrative.

As the executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence Action Fund, I have talked to people throughout our state whose lives have been devastated by gun violence. It is our imperative to work to prevent suicides, homicides, mass shootings, school shootings, accidental shootings, and domestic violence. Unfortunately, the statistics are grim. The year 2021 was the most violent year of the 21st century in North Carolins, with 1,839 gun related deaths; and provisional data for 2022 suggests that levels of violence remain near all-time highs. Guns are now the leading cause of injury deaths for children and youth in our state.

The piece goes on to attack pretty much every gun rights proposal one can care to name, and frankly, it’s disgusting.

See, it’s gross to me because pretty much none of these policies had anything to do with Las Vegas.

She evokes Las Vegas to try and remind the reader of how terrible it was and to set people’s minds to thinking about how they felt that day. A lot of people suddenly started thinking favorably about gun control in the immediate aftermath of that shooting.

Las Vegas has nothing to do with what laws are and aren’t on the books in North Carolina, yet by using their bodies as her soapbox, she hopes to convince people otherwise. She wants people upset and angry because the only arguments gun control advocates really have are emotional ones.

They don’t have anything else.

Yet these are people who died not because of a lack of gun control but because a maniac decided to kill them. Bringing them into any gun control discussion is disgusting, particularly since we’d be blasted for doing the same thing, but bringing them into a discussion of North Carolina’s gun issues is even worse.