But are they right? Do they have a valid point? Are we just ignoring the issue? Well, no. We're doing none of those things, and I'm going to break it down because some people are moronic enough to think this way, then put those thoughts in writing.

Yes, really, and it's kind of pissing me off.

This particular piece of idiocy comes from a publication called Prism that I'd never heard of before but is pretty clearly a home for stupid leftist takes on pretty much any issue one cares to name. What? You consider yourself a leftist and value gun rights? Well, then step up and put an end to mental disabilities being dressed up as political arguments like some dude at your favorite drag queen story hour and I'll stop lumping you all together. Deal?

Anyway, from Prism. That quote in my first sentence? That's literally part of the headline.

The rest isn't any better.

As we near the seventh anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida, I am reflecting on my role as a parent and educator and how I cannot ignore the possibility that a school shooting could happen where I work or where my children attend school. It is a tragedy that so many children, parents, and educators live with the daily fear of gun violence in American schools. While it’s easy to blame policymakers for our current state, we, the people, must also take some accountability. After all, it is our refusal to give up guns that leaves children unprotected. 

You sanctimonious twit.

Guns are on the hips of the police officers you call for help. They're on the hip of the private security guard that stands ready in your favorite stores to step in and protect people, including children. They're in the homes of millions of parents, purchased expressly to protect children.

The fact that schools are gun-free zones and no one can legally care there in most states are part of why they're popular targets among potential mass murderers. We gave up our guns in part so we could play nice with people like you, agreeing not to carry them on campuses, and what happened?

Parkland.

Moving on...

Last year alone, there were 39 school shootings. Then, just weeks into the new year, there was a shooting at a Nashville high school. More than 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School. However, efforts to reform gun laws have failed to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, or raise the minimum age to buy guns. In addition to facing obstacles while pushing for gun reform, some activists like Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg have been accused of being “race traitors” for pushing for progressive change. 

Let me explain. 

First, let me get to the "race traitor" thing. I've called David Hogg a lot of stuff, as have a lot of people, but I've literally never seen anyone call him a race traitor. But, the author included a link, so I clicked it. That link has nothing to do with David Hogg or the gun debate. It doesn't support the author's assertion that anyone called David Hogg any such thing.

Absent evidence of people doing that--and one would imagine it wouldn't be that hard to provide it since Hogg is a public figure active on X--then the claim can be dismissed easily.

Now, let's look at the school shooting numbers. 39 seems like a lot, so I looked. Most of those are incidents we might think of a school shootings, though one was a teacher who was grazed by a stray bullet before school had started for the year. That's not quite the same thing as Parkland. Another was a negligent discharge at 6 in the evening when no school events were being held.

So, suffice it to say that these numbers aren't exactly trustworthy.

Further, there are over 115,000 schools in the United States. Even if all 39 were what people think of as "school shootings," that's still statistically insignificant. In other words as awful as they can be, they're not quite the same thing.

Now, let's talk about the claim that nearly 400,000 kids have "experienced gun violence at school" since Columbine.

That's a lot of kids, but it also appears to count pretty much every student who was in the school when something happened. The number of actual victims is far, far lower. In fact, this counts nearly a thousand kids for every victim.

So while there's a lot more to this piece, I don't have time to go through all the stupidity.

However, I will address the overall premise, which is an attempt to explain why we don't curtail our gun rights in the name of protecting children.

I did part of that by pointing out that guns are used to protect children all the time. Further, I'm going to add in that even by the most conservative statistics you care to find, guns are used to defend good, decent, law-abiding folks an order of magnitude more often than they're used to hurt kids. We're talking about a few thousand kids killed each year with a firearm. Every one is tragic, of course, but most aren't on school campuses when they're shot.

Still, there are far too many, even if the statistics show that most kids have nothing to worry about.

But one of the more conservative figures I've seen for defensive gun uses is 100,000 per year. That's far less than the millions in many other estimates, but let's go with this one for the sake of argument.

Further, many of these people killing these kids didn't get their guns legally in the first place.

So what the author wants us to do is put our children at risk so he can feel better. That's literally the ask, and I'm sorry, but while he's trying to make an argument, what he's really doing is throwing a temper tantrum because he can't get his way.

We aren't giving up our right to keep and bear arms for the sake of the children because it's not beneficial to anyone for us to do so. It won't keep kids safe, nor ourselves.

But at least he decided to write this in a safe space where no one would make fun of him for his mental disabilities.

Oh, wait...

Oops.