The Trace is consistent. I have to give them that.

They consistently talk about gun control as an unquestionable good that must be implemented. That's their entire reason for being, why Billionaire anti-gunner Michael Bloomberg bankrolled them.

So I figured I'd get more of the same when I read a piece titled, "A Teen’s Killing Sparked a Gun Reform Movement in Rural South Carolina. Here’s How It Fared."

I mean, we all know what "gun reform" means.

However, The Trace's report is missing something despite that headline. See if you can spot it.

Mayor Sauls and the Fairfax Town Council have been persistent in their efforts to increase resources for local police, particularly with surveillance. In August, the council’s $2.5 million grant application for a surveillance project named after Markayla was denied; it would have installed cameras throughout the area and reopened an abandoned building as a crime monitoring center.

But some criticized resolving gun violence through increased policing, as opposed to strengthening the county’s social infrastructure. Se’Khu Hadjo-Gentle, chief of the Yemassee Indian Tribe, which is located in rural Allendale, said “We haven’t dealt with the basics. We need to provide jobs and places for children to grow up being children. If you want to talk about crime, it has a source.”

In early June, Sauls and Council Member Smart organized a community trip — including Markayla’s family — to the State House in Columbia to meet with Hosey and Hutto, who did not attend. Hosey, who represents Allendale, argued that little could be done in the capital to address gun violence there. “It is dear to my heart, these things in Allendale,” he said. “But people in the communities are not taking responsibility for it. You cannot legislate that kind of thing up here.”

...

Roberts and Mikell are in the early stages of starting a nonprofit that will focus on organizing their community around public safety and protecting Allendale’s children. The project, they hope, will preserve Markayla’s legacy by changing the system that failed their family. “I refuse to move past it,” Mikell said. “It’s been normalized so much that somebody’s got to make some noise, and that’s what I intend to do.”

So while The Trace does place at least part of the blame on "easy access to guns," the so-called gun reform efforts there? They're nothing of the sort, or so it seems. 

In fact, The Trace fails to note a single anti-gun effort underway. That's what's missing.

At best, we get vague comments like in the last paragraph, but most of the efforts discussed are aimed at what people perceive as the root causes. That's how it should be.

Markayla Roberts was shot while lying in bed. The odds of her shooting death being the result of a lawfully owned firearm used in some kind of lawful manner are nonexistent. 

The focus on non-gun interventions makes sense. I don't know if it'll actually make a huge difference in the short term but in the long term? It's likely to result in a massive payout.

But I'm still hung up on the way The Trace presented this. Especially as they likely know how many people will retain the headline even if they don't read the article, thus perpetuating the idea that even people in rural South Carolina want gun control. There's not really any evidence presented in this piece, and one would imagine if there were, they'd have included it.

What happened there is a terrible tragedy. I saw a similar homicide here in my own hometown not that long ago. It's awful.

It's not the gun's fault, though, and despite the framing by the anti-gun site, it looks like folks there understand that and are trying to get to the underlying causes. This is something we should all be trying to do regardless of your stance on guns.

While they want to make Hosey's comments look like he's just brushing off what happened, he's right. You can't legislate it away. We know because look at what the laws in New York or California are. They still have stuff like this happen, mostly because folks there are so focused on the guns that they don't think about the fact that someone has to pull the trigger.