The Facts About Mass Shootings Support Gun Ownership, Not Gun Control

On February 14, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) marked the one-year anniversary of a horrific school shooting by threatening that President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for a border wall could be used as precedent for future gun control.

Calling the 2018 massacre of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida “another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America,” Pelosi remarked, “That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President?”

“A Democratic president,” she threatened, “can do that.”

By painting the tragic Parkland shooting as a failure of gun control, however, Pelosi disregards the indisputable fact that the shooter’s rampage was enabled by years-long, system-wide failures of policy and personnel.

Andrew Pollack, the father of shooting victim Meadow Pollack, is on a campaign to hold those who failed the Parkland victims accountable. This includes the resource officer and deputies whose inadequate response allowed the shooting spree to continue for 11 long minutes, the FBI officials who ignored a tip about the shooter’s intentions just over a month prior to the attack, the Broward County superintendent whose “Promise” program kept students’ criminal activities from being reported to police, and the school officials, mental health providers, and officials from the Broward Sheriff’s Office who ignored a series of red flags, not to mention murderer’s lengthy history of violence and mental health issues.