Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
The shooting at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas was just one of far too many mass shootings to rock the state of Texas. It has to be troubling for gun rights advocates in the state to see what’s happening because it is becoming more and more likely that gun control will happen.
There’s still a ways to go, mind you, but that doesn’t mean the whole path won’t be traveled.
In the aftermath of a mass shooting, this is normal. Something else that seems normal is the creation of a new gun control group.
A group of parents left Plano for Austin Monday morning with hopes of sparking change after the deadly the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets.
Collin County Parents Against Gun Violence formed after the mass shooting to spark change in the state’s gun laws.
The group is focused on five bills which include provisions like universal background checks, reasonable waiting periods, raising the age to purchase a semi-automatic weapon to 21, red flag laws and safe storage laws.
“I ask them, I beg them to do something,” said parent Saif Islam.
In other words, this is a group that was formed for the express purpose of doing what literally every other gun control group in the state of Texas is trying to push through.
Brilliant.
Where there’s a difference is that this group gets to leverage this particular tragedy to try and foist an anti-gun agenda on the people of Texas.
And, of course, we know good and well that if they got everything on that list, they’d just shift to the next target and keep going. These non-profits never dissolve because they accomplished their goals. They just pick a new goal.
Invariably, that will lead them toward total disarmament.
But what about these goals? That’s what we have to deal with here and now, right?
Well, to start with, universal background checks aren’t. Criminals will keep buying and selling guns regardless of the laws you put in place. Then there’s the fact that the killer in Allen passed his background checks. This wouldn’t have stopped that shooting from happening at all.
Next, waiting periods don’t stop mass shootings and they don’t stop crime. At most, they might stop the odd suicide, but so would better mental health resources. Of course, they want “reasonable” waiting periods, which is one of those vague terms that has no real meaning in this context. Do they want 24 hours or do they want two weeks? Do they want longer?
Raising the purchase age for semi-automatics to 21 is a popular one, but since a federal judge just struck down the same restriction on handguns, it’s not likely to fly with the courts. Especially since a lot of semi-automatic firearms are just hunting guns or even collectors’ pieces.
Further, let’s remember that the Allen killer was 33 years old. He wouldn’t have been stopped by such a law.
Safe storage laws are really just mandatory storage laws and, again, they have no bearing on what happened in Allen as the killer was the lawful owner of the guns and would have been the one to have access to the guns in the first place.
In fact, there’s pretty much nothing here that would have had an impact on the Allen shooting. Funny how that shakes out, ain’t it? That’s because this is yet another gun control group trying to leverage a tragedy to push an agenda that has nothing to do with the tragedy they’re leveraging.