From what we can tell about the Apalachee High School shooting, the alleged killer’s father did pretty much everything wrong. Like, across the board.

As it is, he’s charged with murder himself. While I have concern about prosecutors going down that road, there are reasons why I can see this.

And yeah, he screwed up by the numbers and it cost four people their lives. That sounds like manslaughter at a minimum, at least if they can prove he could have anticipated it.

But it seems that’s not enough for some people. One state lawmaker, state Rep. Tanya Miller, thinks we need a mandatory storage law, too.

Under Georgia law, it’s perfectly legal for a minor to possess an assault weapon like the one used at Apalachee High. There are no restrictions on a child receiving an AR-15 as a gift or purchasing one from an unlicensed seller. Why on earth is it easier for a teenager in Georgia to get a weapon of war than it is for them to vote or to see a doctor when they’re sick?

This isn’t an abstract question—it’s the deadly reality we face. Georgia’s laws are written in a way that prioritizes gun rights over children’s lives, and now is the time to change that. Guns don’t belong in the hands of unsupervised minors, and certainly not AR-style rifles that can fire dozens of rounds per minute. It is an unconscionable failure of leadership that this loophole still exists.

Now, rest assured, no one is coming to take your guns. I’m not interested in stripping law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights. Keep your gun. Just keep it secure. Use it responsibly. But don’t let your rights infringe on someone else’s God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This is about common sense. It’s about mandatory safe storage laws, which require guns to be kept locked and out of reach of children and others who could misuse them. It’s about red flag laws, which allow authorities to temporarily remove firearms from individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others. It’s about closing background check loopholes that let dangerous people get their hands on guns.

First, don’t ever try to tell me no one is coming to take my guns. That’s the thing they tend to say right before they want to take our guns.

Second, let’s talk about mandatory storage laws for a moment. In particular, why it’s stupid to try to pretend this mass murder could have been avoided if we’d just had this law.

See, as noted above, the father of the alleged killer screwed up across the board. He created new definitions and degrees of screwing up. He did it in such a way that one thing is perfectly clear: A mandatory storage law wasn’t going to stop anything.

This is a man who’d been approached and told that his son had made threats of carrying out a mass murder. His response was to buy him an AR-15, for crying out loud. What in the world makes anyone think that someone like this would follow such a law?

And don’t tell me this goes beyond this one incident, either, because the argument for such a law gets even dumber.

Most mass killers tend to be legal adults who purchase firearms lawfully. Mandatory storage laws do nothing to prevent these. 

With other youth killers, understand that you’re never going to legislate good parenting, for one thing, and for another, a determined individual won’t be stopped. Let’s think about Sandy Hook, for example. That killer murdered his own mother just to get her properly secured firearms. You don’t think that will happen?

The talk of mandatory storage laws is a distraction. It’s a way for people like Miller to pretend she’s addressing the issue without having to actually find out why people do this.

That’s all it is, and I’m kind of sick of it.