I don’t expect many within the Biden administration to know a whole lot about guns. Most of them have never exposed themselves to firearms and wouldn’t stoop to such pedestrian levels as to consider their own self-defense needs.
But the debate about the Second Amendment is still raging on, of course, and the Biden administration is trying to push an assault weapon ban that’s going nowhere.
Apparently, the Secretary of Education figured he had something to add to the discussion.
Let me be clear, a lock on a school door is no match for an AR-15. We must ban assault weapons.
— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) June 27, 2023
That’s it? That’s the best he can come up with?
Alright, according to Brandolini’s Law, I might be at this for a bit, so grab a cup of coffee and settle in.
First, let’s talk about locks on a school door.
Cardona appears to labor under the idea that it’s a simple thing to just shoot the lock and gain entry through a door. After all, the movies and television show this happening all the time. TV Tropes even has a page about how common it is and how it doesn’t work like that.
Sure, with an AR-15, you might generate enough damage to take out the lock, but the shooter is also going to be subject to shrapnel if he’s close enough to ensure a hit and if he’s not, he’s going to waste time trying to get the shot. That is a good thing.
After all, while he’s shooting the lock, he’s not shooting students.
However, let’s say that he somehow gains access. I won’t suggest how because, frankly, I’m worried some dipstick will do it and then I get to stay awake for the rest of my life wondering if he read my stuff.
You see, thanks to the policies of people like Cardona, the school has a pile of unarmed teachers. None of them have a gun and so they can’t do anything but hide and pray the bad guy goes down a different corridor.
Yet here, no AR-15 is needed.
We need to remember that the worst school shooting in American history was Virginia Tech. That killer used two handguns to slaughter dozens of innocent people. He didn’t need an AR-15 to create massive carnage.
That’s because that killer met no armed resistance. He could do what he wanted and there wasn’t really a whole lot anyone else could do.
What Cardona is doing here is either helping perpetrate the demonization of the AR-15 or he’s been suckered in by it. The difference doesn’t really matter all that much to me, really, because the result is the same.
In the process of this demonization, one particular category of gun is treated like some kind of game-changer, where if we just made that one thing go away, suddenly we wouldn’t have any problems.
The issue is that an assault weapon ban wouldn’t stop the next Virginia Tech killer. It wouldn’t have stopped a lot of mass shootings, including high-profile shootings that used the AR-15. These killers are broken inside, so it’s insane to think they wouldn’t have obtained a firearm of a different type.
Remember Columbine? Another one that used handguns, by the way.
We don’t need public officials pretending that a ban will suddenly make everything better. They have to know on some level that it won’t.
What it will do, though, is deprive millions of Americans of a safe and effective means of self-defense.
