In the wake of what transpired at Apalachee High School in Winder, it’s unsurprising that the discussion around gun control has heated up. This is completely predictable, even though gun control wasn’t the problem based on what we’ve learned.

But this also isn’t new territory. We’ve seen these things far too often.

Unsurprisingly, the anti-gun media likes to seek out voices that they can amplify, and one of those voices was Sen. Mark Kelly, the husband of former congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Also unsurprising, he said all the things the media wanted to hear.

Sen. Mark Kelly said on Thursday that gun control is an issue that’s “very personal” to him in the wake of a shooting at a Georgia high school that left four people dead and nine others wounded.

“This issue is very personal to me and it’s very tragic and it happens way too often in our country,” Kelly said Thursday on “CBS Mornings.” “Parents and children have the right to feel safe in a school.”

The Arizona Democrat is married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in 2011 at a grocery store. She was left severely disabled after the shooting. Kelly and Giffords went on to found a gun control policy organization in her name and became prominent advocates for gun safety, while being gun owners themselves. 

“This issue makes our country stand out in the worst of ways,” Kelly said. 

…

“You’ve got to hold your elected leaders accountable,” Kelly said. “It’s myself and my colleagues that make the laws — there are folk that are in favor of stronger laws to keep people safer and there are folks that just want guns everywhere and no restrictions on firearms. That’s not the country we should have to live in.”

Of course, many hold up the way a mass shooting impacted him and his wife to lend additional credence to his words.

However, Mark Kelly isn’t the only one who has been touched by mass shootings.

I’ve talked about losing a dear friend in the Cafe Racer shooting in Seattle, Washington in 2012. I’ve been personally touched by the horrors of mass murder, and that was before I learned the details, that my friend Kim was put on her knees and essentially executed by a guy who had been denied a cup of coffee.

This is very personal to me, too.

While I haven’t chatted with him about it, it’s also probably pretty personal to our own Ryan Petty, who lost his daughter Alaina in the Parkland shooting. That’s a lot more personal than losing a friend and it’s even more personal than seeing your wife seriously injured.

Yet the media only amplifies the voices of those touched by these tragedies if they say the right things.

Now, I don’t expect the media to pay attention to “friend of the victim” all that much. It wouldn’t matter where I fell on the spectrum, most likely, but Ryan is different. While they lofted people like Fred Guttenberg to celebrity status, they largely downplayed Ryan and people like him.

There are a lot of pro-gun voices that have been impacted by these tragedies. Folks like us recognize that the problem is not the tool but the tool using it. We recognize how often gun control laws ostensibly sold to us as a means to prevent things like this fail to do just that.

“Look, Tom, Kelly is a senator. That’s going to give him a certain amount of focus.”

Sure, but they did this before he was elected. They listened to him prattle on about things he didn’t understand and treated him seriously for it, all because of his history. And again, he’s not the only example, just the one being trotted out here and now.

Meanwhile, pro-gun folks similarly touched are more or less ignored.

Funny how that shakes out, isn’t it?