The UNLV shooting was always going to be part of the gun debate. From the moment news broke, we all knew that it was going to be used to push gun control.

In the end, three faculty members were killed and one was wounded. Two police officered were injured in the confrontation with the gunman, before he was killed.

There was never any doubt that it was an awful event that traumatized plenty of folks, even those who were never in any danger. There was never any doubt that it was going to be used to push gun control, either.

And it already has been. Yet, over at Firearms News, David Codrea has thoughts.

“We need Congress to step up’ after UNLV [University of Nevada Las Vegas] shooting,” NewsNation reported, citing Joe Biden’s official statement crafted by White House wordsmiths to exploit the murders to full advantage. “He urged lawmakers to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” He also “urged lawmakers to … implement fast national red flag laws, require safe gun storage and enact universal background checks.”

The problem with those “solutions,” AP reported, are that the killer, bought his gun legally, meaning he’d undergone a background check, and he used “a 9 mm handgun.” Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill added that “the shooter brought 11 magazines with him to the campus, and police found nine of them on the shooter after he was killed.” There goes the objection that magazine bans are justified because having to swap them out gives victims time to tackle their assailant. What happened instead was “Terrified students and professors cowered in classrooms and offices as the gunman roamed the top three floors of UNLV’s five-story Lee Business School…”

Why are supposedly free Americans in then land of the Second Amendment reduced to that pathetic state of affairs? They certainly outnumber the “lone wolf” attackers who carry out most school shootings. So how can one delusional nutjob completely dominate and cow a campus full of predominantly young adults? In this case, it’s thanks to those citizen disarmament edicts the president, the Democrats, and the media are saying we need more of. And Nevada law and university policy agree.

“Nevada prohibits any person from carrying or possessing a firearm on the property of the Nevada System of Higher Education (state university and college system),” Giffords Law Center notes on a state gun laws page. “This prohibition does not restrict the possession of a firearm on the property of a private or public school or child care facility by a: 1) peace officer; 2) school security guard; or 3) person having written permission from the president of a branch or facility of the Nevada System of Higher Education, the principal of the private or public school, or the person designated by a child care facility to give permission to carry or possess the firearm.”

There’s a lot more to Codrea’s piece, and I recommend you go and read it.

Yet at the core of things, there exists this idea that places like UNLV create an environment attractive to potential mass shooters. People are forcibly disarmed by law so they can’t defend themselves.

Then these places have the gall to advise people in the midst of a something like the UNLV shooting to “run-hide-fight.”

Oh, they tell you all kinds of things you can use as weapons, but do you know what else can be used as a weapon? A lawfully carried firearm, that’s what.

The gun-free zones created by laws determined to disarm everyone generally fail to disarm determined killers, and while many colleges have their own police departments, there’s little difference between those departments and your community’s law enforcement agencies. They can’t be everywhere and they have to respond to a shooting after it’s already started.

The campus gun-free zones don’t make people safer.

And the UNLV shooting isn’t evidence we need more gun control, especially since he followed every law and jumped through every hoop on the books. He didn’t even use a dreaded “assault weapon” for his deadly attack.

It’s proof, though, that we need to stop disarming law abiding citizens.

No, we don’t know for a fact that someone present would have been armed and been able to stop the attack. We do know, though, that the laws on the books made damn sure no one was, though.