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These days, guns are taboo and mass shootings have become commonplace.

After Sunday shooting, MSNBC hit FL Gov. Rick Scott over gun laws--despite gun being purchased in MD



These days, guns are taboo and mass shootings have become commonplace. On Sunday, a 24-year-old man from Maryland opened fire at a video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida. When the shooting stopped, two people were dead and a dozen more were injured. The shooter took his own life. Gun control advocates seized on the attack and began hammering away at Florida’s supposedly irresponsible gun laws. Perhaps no one was a succinct as MSNBC’s Ali Velshi who made a passing reference to the fact that the shooter was from Maryland before rattling off a list of Florida’s alleged shortcomings. As he put it:
“Florida does not require a permit to purchase rifles or handguns. It does not require any firearm registration either, or any licensing for gun owners. To carry a rifle, no permit is needed whatsoever. Carrying a handgun, however, does require a permit, and that restriction is one of the few on gun-owners in Florida. Other than the handgun carry permit requirement, there is a so-called ‘red flag’ law that allows police to take guns away from those deemed as dangerous by their friends and family.”
Then, a visibly agitated Velshi played a clip of Florida Governor Rick Scott (R). The Governor suggested that we can’t just pray about solutions to mass shootings, we have to do something about them. Velshi mocked the statement, saying: “Well, which is it? Something’s got to change or we’re going to pray about it?” The problem, of course, is that – as Velshi begrudgingly acknowledged – the shooter didn’t obtain his weapon in Florida. He was from Maryland. There, he purchased two guns legally, eventually using one of them in the Florida attack. MSNBC likes to downplay this fact, but it matters because Maryland already has virtually every gun control measure that progressives claim they want. As Dana Loesch points out, they have “30 day waiting periods, universal background checks, registration, license to purchase, may-issue LTC, ban on previously institutionalized persons owning guns, and no reciprocity with Florida.”

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I’ve argued, more times than I care to count, that “more laws” won’t stop mass casualty incidents. You could implement any combination of gun control measures, up to and including complete ownership bans, and these attacks would either still occur, or they’d be carried out with a different type of weapon. The tool is just an implement. Even if you could accomplish the impossible and eliminate privately-owned firearms, there would Always be another weapon waiting in the wings. If we’re going to “do something,” our course of action should target the motive and desire. As I’ve written before, up until the 1970’s it was common for children to bring their gun-club rifles to school on the bus. Mass shootings were almost non-existent. These days, guns are taboo and mass shootings have become commonplace. If we really want to deal with the problem, we need to identify the things that turned that pre-70’s society into the one we now occupy. Figure out what changed, and work to reverse it.




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