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The Official AMGOA Response to The Parkland School Shooting

by Dave Dalton on February 26, 2018

Now that the dust has settled and the facts have come out about the recent horrific tragedy in Florida many have asked what our 'official position' is regarding new calls for gun regulations by both anti-gun groups and the liberal media.

Once again law abiding gun owners must endure a tirade of abuse because a lone nut job (and let's face it the kid is) broke more laws than you can count and left so many young lives lost. We sympathize with every family and friend that has been effected by this nightmare and respect their anger but at the same time we cannot over look several extremely important facts.

  1. The FBI has failed miserably by not following up on credible evidence they received in several tips.
  2. Local law enforcement failed miserably after receiving well over 30 calls about this boy.
  3. Children and youth services failed miserably after multiple run ins with this boy.
  4. And finally at least one sheriff deputy stood by and allowed the shooting to continue without intervening, something that is so reprehensible we can't even get our heads around it.

This tragedy could have been averted on multiple occasions if these agencies just did their job but once again an inanimate object is to blame. A person who (once again) should have never been allowed to own a firearm slipped through the cracks of law enforcement and (once again) the ramifications are nothing short of horrific.

The anti-gun crowd will tell you this could have been avoided by banning 'assault weapons' or bump stocks, or limiting magazines to a certain size when in reality no one can say if any of these would have stopped this lunatic. A person intent of doing harm is going to find a away to do it and no law is going to stop them. These same groups now claim the phrase 'a good man with a gun' is now proven wrong all because one coward (and there's no other word for it) refused to do his job and try and stop to shooter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every day we see stories from around the nation where ordinary citizens stop attacks using their legally carried firearm. Most of these people do this with a small fraction of the training a sheriff's deputy would have had. But for some reason the anti-gun crowd doesn't count those.

Legislators rattle their sabres demanding justice for the dead by throwing every thing they can into bills that not only would not have stopped this shooter, they wouldn't have stopped any of the shooters in recent history. But to them it's do something no matter how inane the legislation is. They talk about 'common sense' laws that are so far off the mark of anything credible you have to wonder how they manage to function in a normal society.

So what are our suggestions?

  1. Repeal the gun-free school zone act IMMEDIATELY. 99% of all mass shootings happen in gun-free zones all because the shooter knows they wont get any resistance
  2. Allow state and local school boards to allow well-trained teachers who want to protect these kids to carry concealed firearms
  3. Strengthen mental health care laws by removing parts of the HIPPA laws so that psychiatrists can report those they feel might be a danger to society.
  4. Begin a national dialog and study to see if there is a connection between psychotropic drugs and these types of attacks (many of the shooters over the past few years were reportedly on them)
  5. Start teaching firearm safety classes at the junior-senior high school level as it was taught for decades before the anti-gun crowd convinced schools it was a bad thing.

As many have said over the past week no one thing is going to solve this problem and screaming for guns bans sure as heck isn't even an attempt to solve the problem, it's a placebo that wont work. Legislators have to get over their absolute hatred of guns and start looking at the larger picture. Until they do we are going to continue this horrific pattern.