The Apalachee High School shooting is starting to fade from the news just a bit, but it won’t vanish entirely. In some ways, it shouldn’t. It was an awful tragedy and we shouldn’t forget such things easily. We should remember. We should try to remember all of them.

For some people, though, it seems that all that matters is how they can use the last mass shooting to advance an anti-gun agenda.

The fact that Apalachee High School is in Winder, Georgia, a pro-gun state, is bound to be exploited to some degree or another, as it has been.

Yet I came across an op-ed out of New Jersey that really rubbed me kind of wrong. Let’s get into it, then I’ll explain why it hit me that way.

It starts with the headline, which reads, “Georgia is on all of our minds. America requires better gun control,” and goes from there.

Winder, Georgia is a pleasant town between Atlanta and Athens, known for its parks and wildlife. But on the morning Wednesday, Sept. 4, it became known for something else. Shots rang out at Apalachee High School, killing at least four people, CNN reported. Approximately 30 more people were injured, although it was unclear how many of the injuries were gunshot wounds. The story is still developing. 

What has not developed is our nation’s success in reducing the number of school shootings. According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Firearm injuries and deaths continue to be a significant public health problem in the United States.”

…

Today is a day to extend our thoughts and prayers to those families affected by the Winder, Georgia school shooting.

Now, the author is out of Florida, but again, this is a New Jersey publication that had the cajones to run this tripe.

That bothers me because I remember how, in anti-gun New Jersey, three people were killed in an anti-semitic attack at a Jersey City deli. Despite the plethora of gun control laws on the books in New Jersey, the killers still had an AR-15 and still murdered three people and would have killed more if they could have. 

Pretty short memory they have there, ain’t it?

See, there was no obligation for that publication to run that op-ed. They chose to do so, but by running it, they’re showing that they don’t recognize that their state’s own gun control laws failed to stop a similar enough attack just five years ago. The problem isn’t insufficient gun control and it never has been.

But gun control is a quick, easy answer for those who don’t want to think too deeply.

“Well, if they couldn’t get guns, they couldn’t shoot people.”

Sure, but how do you reconcile that with people saying, “I support the Second Amendment but…” or something of that sort?

Any gun can be used in a mass murder, especially when the populace is largely prohibited from having guns of their own with them, which is what most gun control advocates prefer. So how can you even pay lip service to the Second Amendment and keep people from getting guns? The two positions are mutually exclusive.

It’s far better for us to start looking at the reasons why people do this and address those instead.