Because you see, that's really the vibe I'm getting from this piece.

It starts with the headline: "Map: Which States Implement ‘Foundational’ Gun Control Policies?" 

It doesn't get any better, really.

A shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., last week — allegedly committed by a 14-year-old gunman who used an AR-15-style gun — killed four people, injured nine more and sent a community reeling.

It’s the state’s 16th mass shooting this year, and one of 27 school shootings in 2024 that caused injuries or deaths, according to Education Week. A recent Harvard Youth Poll found that voters ages 18-29 are more concerned about gun violence than climate change.

As the National Rifle Association outlines on its website, Georgia does not mandate the licensing of gun owners or registration of firearms, and it does not require a permit to purchase or carry a handgun or rifle. Advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety outlines five “foundational” gun control measures that could prevent fatalities, including background checks (or permits) for gun purchases; forbidding concealed carry without a permit; “extreme risk” laws that make it possible to use court orders to temporarily take guns from people in crisis (or abusers); rejecting “stand your ground” or “shoot first” policies; and secure storage of firearms and ammunition.

The author puts "foundational" in quotes, but offers no explanation. That leaves readers to discern what that means for themselves. The implication is that these are, in fact, foundational laws.

But they're not.

Everytown opts for that language because it makes it sound like this is something not just simple but completely in keeping with the Constitution. It's foundational, just like how the Second Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights are foundational to our nation.

Except this is anything but. It's all infringement on our rights, and a lot of their so-called foundational laws likely won't hold up to judicial scrutiny under the Bruen decision, making the term even more idiotic.

And let's not forget the claims made in the second paragraph there.

First, the claim regarding the number of "mass shootings" in Georgia comes from the Gun Violence Archive, whose numbers we've debunked on a regular basis. Yet, in the largest state east of the Mississippi, the fact that there are relatively few "mass shootings" this year even with that incredibly and ridiculously expansive definition is actually a good thing. In fact, many of those don't have any fatalities and only one has more than a couple.

Sure, they're all tragic and all represent a problem, but they're not mass shootings.

And the Education Week numbers aren't any better. Many of those are incidents where it simply happened on school property and didn't necessarily involve students at all. Several were during sporting events that are open to the general public, for example, and at least one was a guy being shot in the parking lot during a teacher work day. Still others had the incident happen outside, but on school property, while events were going on inside. 

And almost none of them rise to the level of a mass shooting.

So why is someone who writes for a site called Governing taking everything from the anti-gun side as some kind of gospel? There's absolutely no critical thinking involved in the creation of this piece, which would be fine if it was also unbiased.

It's not and it's pathetic.

I'm sick of anyone in the media pretending that Everytown was anything but a gun control group. Their studies are driven by bias, as is their use of the word "foundational" to describe some of their most pressing priorities. The echoing of that is incredibly troubling.

Everytown doesn't get to set priorities for the rest of the nation.