In the wake of Wednesday’s horrible school attack in Florida, reports have surfaced that there were ample warning signs about the suspect, ranging from his past troubles at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to a social media post that had been reported to the FBI, yet gun prohibitionists have predictably blamed firearms for the carnage.
Nineteen-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz allegedly killed 17 people and wounded several others.
The Miami Herald quoted math teacher Jim Gard, who recalled, “We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him. There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
Still, anti-gun Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) wasted no time, taking the Senate floor to criticize his colleagues.
“This epidemic of mass slaughter,” Murphy said, as quoted by the Daily Beast. “This scourge of school shooting after school shooting. It only happens here, not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction. We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”
The media began feverishly reporting that this was the 18th school shooting so far this year. But as detailed by the Daily Wire, that may not be entirely accurate. The figure apparently comes from Everytown for Gun Safety, the multi-million-dollar gun prohibition lobbying group bankrolled by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
However, at least two of those incidents were suicides. Four incidents involved single bullets fired into school buildings through windows. One involved an accidental discharge when a third-grade student pulled the trigger on a policeman’s sidearm at a Minnesota school. The report also detailed the incidents in which students died, and there was one incident on Jan. 31 at a Pennsylvania high school in which a 32-year-old man was fatally shot.
Interestingly, a few Miami Herald readers have referred to the report that the FBI had been warned about the suspect, noting sarcastically that the agency was apparently so preoccupied with “fake dossiers” and “trying to derail the Presidency” that they didn’t investigate. One reader observed, “Maybe if they spend less time chasing Russian ghosts, they could prevent some of these.”
By no small coincidence, Thursday’s Seattle P-I.com is reporting about the arrest of a high school student in Everett, Washington, whose grandmother reported him to the police after she discovered “credible threats” about planning a school attack in his journal. Could it be argued that Everett police are more on-the-ball than the FBI?
Four years ago, nationally-recognized Second Amendment advocate Alan Gottlieb co-authored a book titled “Dancing In Blood: Exposing the Gun Ban Lobby’s Playbook to Destroy Your Rights.” The book detailed how the gun prohibition lobby had prepared literal “playbooks” for community-based anti-gun activists to campaign against private gun ownership. The strategies exposed then are playing out almost “by the book” in the wake of Wednesday’s tragedy.
