By Dave Workman
Special to Liberty Park Press
OPINION—Buried near the end of a Fox News report about suburban school districts outside of New York City favoring armed security is an observation from a former FBI agent which should be required reading for every politician whose answer to mass shootings is to call for more gun restrictions.
“Many politicians use school shootings and mass shootings as an opportunity to hone in on gun control,” said ex-special agent Nicole Parker. “I believe in responsible legal gun ownership. I have yet to come across any violent shooter who had any regard for gun laws. Anyone willing to shoot and kill an innocent person has no respect for human life, let alone a gun law.”
Parker was working in Florida when the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland occurred on Feb. 14, 2018. Writing at Fox News in February 2023, she described what happened at the school and her part in having to notify parents their children had been killed.
Parker’s observation is not new, but among gun control proponents—virtually all of them Democrats or who vote for Democrats—the message does not resonate, or is apparently ignored in favor of adopting more restrictions on law-abiding citizens. Such restrictions would not prevent tragedies, and they only affect people who would never consider committing a violent crime, including a school shooting.
The report says about two dozen school districts in “red-leaning suburbs” of the Big Apple “have approved armed guards to protect their children.” They favor “a show of force rather than further curtailing Second Amendment rights in the Empire State.”
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy in December 2012, the National Rifle Association encouraged the use of armed security at schools to prevent such events. Many educators scoffed, yet some school districts very quietly adopted “school resource officer” programs.
According to an article in the Michael Bloomberg-backed online news site The Trace in August 2023, a survey by the National Center for Education Statistics found that “more than 50 percent” of schools had at least one armed officer at school during the 2019-2020 school year.
The same story also said a 2022 poll by Phi Delta Kappa International “found that among 1,008 adults surveyed, 45 percent said they supported arming teachers.” However, The Trace noted, “A recent survey by the RAND Corporation found that 54 percent of K-12 educators believe that arming teachers would make students less safe, while 20 percent think the opposite.”
Yet, The Trace doesn’t focus on Parker’s observation that violent shooters ignore gun control laws. The story mentions the shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School which left three adults and three students dead before responding police arrived and killed the shooter within four minutes of entering the building.
Contrast that with the highly-criticized responses of armed officers at Uvalde, Texas and Parkland, Fla.
Still, Parker’s observation stands unrefuted. Determined killers are not deterred by restrictive gun control laws.
This doesn’t seem to register with the gun control lobby, which seems to place a higher priority on disarmament than deterrence.
Dave Workman is editor-in-chief at TheGunMag.com
