The South Florida Sun Sentinel’s Monday edition carries a blistering report about the aftermath of the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland that notes, “Despite an extraordinary series of governmental failures leading to the bloodshed in Parkland, just a few low-level employees have faced consequences over errors that may have cost lives.”
But the “collateral damage” from the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reaches clear to Washington State, where the crime was exploited by gun control proponents to push a massive multi-pronged initiative that made the Evergreen State’s gun laws among the most restrictive in the nation. That new law is being challenged by a federal lawsuit, filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association.
It was fought during the campaign by NRA and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. And over the weekend, at the monthly Washington Arms Collectors’ gun show, members began donating to all of those groups to support what they think will be a long campaign to overturn the restrictive new law.
One Washington police chief, in Republic, Ferry County, is promising to not enforce the law, which strips young adults aged 18-20, of their Second Amendment right to purchase a so-called “semiautomatic assault rifle.” The measure has such a broad definition that it encompasses literally every semi-auto rifle ever manufactured, including hunting rifles and popular rimfire target rifles.
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According to the Sun Sentinel, no school administrators, sheriff’s deputies or FBI personnel have apparently been held accountable for failure to act on tips, warnings and even during the shooting.
“But at the agencies charged with keeping Broward County’s schools safe, where leaders have been quick to pat themselves on the back for their work, few people have suffered consequences for multiple errors that have come to light since the shooting.”—South Florida Sun Sentinel
The newspaper report contends that one reason the killer was successful was “the easy availability of firearms in Florida,” a remark that seems straight out of the gun control playbook. To buy that firearm, the killer had to pass a background check.
But state and federal law is crafted to not infringe on the constitutionally-delineated fundamental right to keep and bear arms because the Second Amendment is, after all, a right, not a government-regulated privilege. An essay in Monday’s National Review online puts this dilemma in perspective, while contending that the Second Amendment is treated like a “second-class right.”
The story quotes Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine. The high school is in his district.
“There were so many mistakes,” Udine stated. “I don’t feel there’s been sufficient accountability. But more importantly, the people that live in northwest Broward, my neighbors and friends, don’t feel there’s been accountability.”
But who has been held “accountable?” Tens of millions of law-abiding gun owners or would-be gun owners who didn’t commit the crime and weren’t even in the state, that’s who. Gun laws have been tightened not just in Washington but in California, and the incoming Democrat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is planning to do more.
Rights activists say this is typical of the gun prohibition movement. Someone commits a heinous crime, and the only people who get blamed and penalized are the ones who didn’t do it.
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