Lux Lucet

Student leader David Hogg speaks at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington D.C., March 24, 2018.

They came, the saw, they marched. On Saturday, March 24 2018 approximately 200,000 people filled the streets of Washington D.C. to call on Congress to pass anti-gun legislation which the marchers claim is the only solution to solving the problem of school shootings / mass shootings in the US.

On their website, the marchers list three demands: 1) A ban on the sale of assault weapons, 2) A prohibition on the sale of high-capacity magazines, and 3) Requiring background checks to ensure dangerous people can’t buy guns. Let’s look at them.

According to March For Our Lives (MFOL), “Our elected officials MUST ACT by,” in the first place, “Passing a law to ban the sale of assault weapons like the ones used in Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, Aurora, Sandy Hook and, most recently, to kill 17 innocent people and injure more than a dozen others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.” We are told that “No civilian should be able to access these weapons or war.”

This statement is propaganda. The problem is its central term, “assault rifle,” is never defined, yet we’re told they are “weapons of war” to which civilians should not have access.

But the rifles that were used in the various mass shooting are not “weapons of war.” That is to say, they are not machine guns or the sort used by soldiers in combat. Here, I’m talking about guns such as the Vietnam era M16 or the more recent M4. These are fully automatic rifles, what are often referred to as “machine guns,” which are designed to fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull.

The AR-15s used in the mass shootings listed on the MFOL website were semi-automatic rifles, not fully automatic. This is not to say that the AR-15 – and just to be clear the “AR” in AR-15 does not stand for “assault rifle,” it stands for Armalite Rifle, the name of the company that developed the particular style of rifle in the 1950s – but they are not “weapons of war” as the MFOL website claims. By calling the AR-15 a “weapon of war,” MFOL is attempting to confuse the public to advance their political agenda. In other words, they’re propagandists.

The second demand made by MFOL centers on, “Prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines such as the ones the shooter at our school [n.b. the term “our school” as if this movement were organized by the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School] – and so many other recent mass shootings used.”

This demand is backed up by the claim that, “States that ban high-capacity magazines have half as many shootings involving three or more victims as states that allow them.” This is an important claim. As such, one would expect links and/or documentation to support it, but none are offered. Just what study is being cited? The “students” don’t tell us.

Even supposing such a study exists and that it was rigorously conducted and peer reviewed, and that it supports the “students” claim, it does not prove as much as they would have us believe. For example does the study claim that the reduction in mass shootings was caused by the banning of high-capacity magazines? Perhaps the study found some other reason or reasons for the difference. Maybe there are other studies that reached different conclusions. It’s hard to say, because the “students” don’t reveal their sources. If they were in my class, these students would be severely marked down for sloppy work.

Third, the “students” demand, “Closing the loophole in our background check law that allows dangerous people who shouldn’t be allowed to purchase firearms to slip through the cracks and buy guns online or at guns shows.”

This is an odd claim for a movement supposedly driven by survivors of the Parkland school shooting, because it has no bearing whatsoever on the case of the confessed shooter, Nicholas Cruz. According to an article in USA Today, the gun Cruz used in his murder spree, “was purchased at Sunrise Tactical Supply,” and that, “Cruz cleared an instant background check via the FBI criminal database.”

Cruz did not purchase his gun at a gun show nor did he evade the FBI background check. In other words, Cruz did not “slip through the cracks” which the “students” claim are endangering all our lives.

That said, there may be another way in which Cruz could be said to have “slipped through the cracks,” but the story is not MSM narrative compliant and, therefore, is not widely reported.

As CNN reported back in February, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel admitted that his office received 23 calls about the Cruz’s family, but, “Records obtained from the sheriff’s office by CNN show that law enforcement agency received at least 45 calls for service relating to Cruz or his brother from 2008 to 2017.”

One would think that so many calls related to one individual might result in a police record, which – and I’m making and assumption here – might have made it just a little more difficult for Cruz to purchase the weapon he used to shoot up the school. But apparently no arrests were ever made.

Then there’s the issue with disgraced School Resource Officer Scott Peterson, the armed guard who stood outside and did nothing while Cruz killed 17 students. According to the Washington Post, Peterson is mentioned as part of a 2016 social services agency investigation into Nikolas Cruz…Peterson was approached by investigators and ‘refused to share any information…regarding [an] incident that took place with’ the teenager.”

With all of his obvious problems, why all the hesitancy on the part of law enforcement to take effective action about Cruz? One explanation is the agreement worked out between Broward County Schools had worked out an agreement with the police, “to treat twelve different misdemeanor offenses as school-related issues, not criminal ones,” in order to lower the incidence of student arrests in Broward County Schools, which had led the state in of Florida in sending students to the state’s juvenile justice system.”

So instead of actually addressing the issue honestly, the Broward County Schools and Broward County Sheriff’s Office elected to “solve” the problem of high rates of student incarceration by moving goalposts. Had school officials and law enforcement treated Cruz’s many behavioral incidents as previously instead of redefining his deviancy as school related issues, perhaps he would not have been in a position to pass the background check to purchase the gun.

Then there’s the FBI, and agency which received multiple, specific warnings that Cruz was a school shooter in waiting, yet did nothing to pursue the leads (see here, here, and here).

The real slipping through the cracks wasn’t Cruz’s ability to purchase a gun, it was law enforcement’s failure to do its job of protecting innocent citizens from those who would seek to prey on them.

Given the shoddy logic of the MFOL’s legislative demands, it’s refusal to hold law enforcement and school bureaucrats accountable for their obvious shortcomings, and the dubious claim that this nationwide movement was somehow miraculously organized by a group of grieving high school students in the period of five weeks, in this author’s opinion the entire MFOL movement should be considered an anti-Second Amendment propaganda front. Further, it is this author’s opinion that MFOL is not ultimately interested in “common sense” gun legislation, whatever that is, but represents the leading edge of the gun grabbers’ latest attempt to make the owing of firearms illegal for Americans.

It is high time for those who love the Constitution and hold dear their right to own and use firearms need to stand up and speak up.