But survivors who embrace gun control make a lot of press. They become powerful advocates for gun control. But not every survivor believes that.

The issue is that most of those survivors never make the headlines. Because they're not speaking out against guns, the media doesn't tend to care about them.

So imagine my surprise when I came across a piece out of Maine that talks about how some Lewiston survivors are now stronger believers in the Second Amendment than they were before.

It was league bowling night and Bobbi Nichols and her sister, Tricia Asselin, were on rival teams. Nichols visited Asselin’s lane to rib her and wish her luck.

Nichols was halfway back to her lane at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley in Lewiston when she heard a bang. Then another. 

...

Some survivors of previous mass shootings have publicly come out in support of gun control. Survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, went on to found March For Our Lives, where nearly 2 million people marched nationwide in support of gun legislation. Parents of the children killed in the Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde, Texas, testified before Congress and begged members to take legislative action to prevent further mass shootings.

But Nichols, who used to hunt, opposes gun restrictions more now than she did before the shooting. She thinks people should own guns, take classes on using them and learn self-defense.

While she supports one of the gun policies that Gov. Janet Mills shepherded through the Legislature after the shooting, Nichols doesn’t believe any of the bills passed this year would have prevented the mass shooting.

“I’m tired of them coming after our guns,” she said of policymakers, who she believes are pushing legislation without talking to survivors to learn what they support.

Of course, the report goes on to talk to a lot of anti-gunners who were impacted by Lewiston to some degree or another, so I won't give the Bangor Daily News too much credit, but they lead off the story with Nichols and her experiences, which were awful enough that others had to inform her of part of how she survived--someone's body fell on her and shielded her from the killer.

That's beyond awful, and the fact that she's not anti-gun, at least not for the most part, is something that should be talked about a bit.

She's right that nothing that Mills pushed for would have prevented Lewiston, too. They had everything they supposedly needed and everyone dropped the ball. We've seen that throughout the nation, too. The Club Q shooter in Colorado Springs had made a bomb threat, yet no one red-flagged him, either.

But for me, the important thing is that many of these folks who we see touted as the voice of survivors and the families of those slain are really just the loud anti-gun voices. Our own Ryan Petty lost his daughter in Parkland, yet why is it that someone was whacked out as Manuel Oliver gets headlines every time he farts while Ryan is often ignored by that same media?

Ryan isn't complaining, mind you. This is me talking here, and this is nonsense.

Nichols survived and now she's even more pro-gun than she was before. I respect this a great deal. I only wish we heard more from people like this.