By Kat Ainsworth Stevens
The bodies of the dead were not yet cold in the wake of an active killer spree at a Nashville, Tennessee, Christian school when it happened. Law enforcement had given brief statements, doling out dribs and drabs of information, and a spectator decided to get involved. She was an unidentified woman who claimed she was, coincidentally, in the area vacationing with her school-age children (spring break is over, but whatever).
Later identified as Ashbey Beasley, the woman gave this speech to the assembled cameras:Aren’t you guys tired of covering this? Aren’t you guys tired of being here and covering all these mass shootings? I am on vacation with my son visiting my sister-in-law. I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July. I have visited with 130 lawmakers…these mass shootings will continue to happen until our lawmakers step up and pass gun safety legislation.
Lights. Camera. Gun control.
It was another push to restrict gun rights, and it was made before the blood of the murdered had even dried. Was that tacky? Classless? Taking advantage of dead bodies to further an anti-Second Amendment agenda?
It was all of those things, and speaking as a mother, I’m here to say yes, Ms. Beasley, we are tired of it. We’re tired of mental illness, psychosis, and evil being ignored and sometimes promoted in favor of demonizing an inanimate object.
I’m a mom, too. In fact, the ages of my kids run the gamut from a college student to a boisterous boy who turns two on April Fool’s Day. I’ve been through lockdowns, guns being spotted on campus, possible active killers on school grounds, and a boy in college who felt it was appropriate to draw and gesture with a knife during class (the school, by the way, did nothing, but that’s a story for another day).
Here’s my hot take on the current state of affairs: guns belong in schools. In our small Texas town, teachers, the principal, and other staff members legally carry. It isn’t because we’re the Lone Star State so much as it is our specific community made this choice.
As a matter of fact, when we lived in the now mega-restrictive Washington State, my daughter had a grade school teacher who carried, and I don’t think anyone ever noticed besides me. Normalcy bias is real. People see what they expect to see. He was my favorite teacher through her entire grade school career. Who wouldn’t love a teacher who was prepared to defend their kid’s life?
What are the odds a deranged, misguided youth is going to shoot his way into an educational institution where it’s known the staff carries? What are the odds of a massacre when teachers, office staff, and even the janitor are willing to shoot back?
A Nashville police spokesman has this to say yesterday when asked if The Covenant School was the only school that was targeted . . .
It was the only school that was targeted. There was another location that was mentioned, but because of a threat assessment by the suspect, too much security, they decided not to.
We are all horrified by the events in Nashville at The Covenant School. It’s hard to wrap our minds around suddenly losing a child to a derranged killer. Or at least it’s hard for most people. For some of us, the reality of violence is a bit closer to home.
Many women, such as those involved with Moms Demand Action, or Ms. Beasley who just happened to stumble into a live press conference while she was in town, feel the solution is strict gun control. Strip the guns from existence, they scream.
The fact that schools are already, by and large, gun free-zones means nothing to them. It only means we haven’t taken gun-free zones far enough yet. We need to make them nationwide! Let’s no-knock gun owners and take their firearms by force! (Admit it, you can hear them saying exactly that.)
Moms don’t have the luxury of irrational behavior when it comes to their kids’ safety. I’d do just about anything to ensure the safety of mine, whether you’re talking about the one that’s technically grown or the little dude who has proudly “helped” take more than a dozen deer and even more feral hogs in his short life. He’s even supervised the building of ARs and cleaning who knows how many guns.
That desire for their safety doesn’t mean pushing for gun control or fighting to make the entire country “gun-free.” It means raising kids who fight. Kids who are smart. Kids who know guns. Kids who understand that sometimes you brace yourself and do battle like you’re the third zebra trying to get onto Noah’s Ark and it’s started to rain.
Guns belong in schools, and schools should advertise that fact. If it were a reality that defensive gun use was expected in schools rather than frowned upon, advertising wouldn’t be so necessary. But considering the gun-free zones that double as free-fire zones for deranged killers, a bit of signage seems like a good idea. Or not. What is it they preached to our kids in preschool? You get what you get, and you don’t get upset. That goes double for spree killers.
Taking this a step further, here’s a little detail for you: I was a private school kid. The school I attended was larger than The Covenant School, but it was also religious. I wasn’t raised around guns. Not even kind of. Instead, I was raised to turn the other cheek (translation in my childhood and early adulthood: get your ass handed to you and take your lumps). I don’t pretend to know the dogma or practices taught at the Nashville school, but by and large I’m quite familiar with the environment.
Unpopular opinion: turning the other cheek is all well and good until your child is lying dead on the floor.
Armed, trained school staff would be fantastic. College kids being allowed to possess firearms on campus nationwide would be amazing. The abolition of “gun free-zones” in general would be stellar. Because, you see, when you say it’s for the children, it should be about keeping them alive, not condemning them to spend their days as soft targets waiting for evil to arrive.
I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, or polka-dotted with pink stripes. Gun rights are human rights. If just one teacher or janitor had been carrying a gun in Nashville, the body count likely would be lower or maybe even nonexistent (a dead would be spree shooter doesn’t count).
Kids deserve to be safe, and whether you like it or not, that means…guns. Guns in schools. In private schools, public schools, and that weird school down the street you think is probably run by a bunch of hippies.
I refuse to apologize for my pro-Second Amendment stance. I won’t back down from the belief that schools should not and cannot be “gun-free zones.” In fact, a school staff that’s known for carrying guns just happens to be a prerequisite for my son Beau’s future educational institution. Expect me to trust you to educate my child? Well then, I expect you to be armed and properly trained, too.
Biden like Obama before never let a tragedy go to waste before their blaming Guns, The Gun Lobby(NRA)Gun Stores, Gun Owners for these events. Liberals mostly all mouth and no mind
We now have a culture that does not value life (oh, unless it is a “sentient” pig or chicken). If a woman winds up pregnant, that miracle of life is nothing but an inconvenience, a lifestyle impediment. People who disagree with you don’t deserve to live. Not embracing the gay lifestyle makes you unworthy of life. Failing to contradict everything you know about life and submit to the ideology of random gender selection means you don’t really want your life to continue. Your light-reflective skin you were born with is a crime punishable by death.
In the leftist mindset, not committing to the radical, bizarre ideology of the day makes one an existential threat to that ideology. Those people need to be eliminated. When criminals are raised to the level of victims; they will instinctively exploit that system until, not being, by definition, very smart, they go too far, even for the permissive society.
Notoriety and renown comes with heinous crimes. To those who are relegated to the anonymity of the shadows, this is their only chance for recognition. Mass murder is, in their mind, a viable vehicle to fame and eternal life through infamy.
Our society faces numerous threats from unhinged individuals and groups. These are but a few and there is also the Democrat party which incites all these threats for political purposes. It may be an effort to rally radical groups for support and votes or it might be the need for a convenient tragedy to exploit to achieve a political goal, such as disarming and rendering defenseless the population. But the threats are real and they are deadly.
If a gun confiscation agenda were pursued, who do you think would comply? Those who see a gun as their one method to achieve everlasting fame or the law abiding citizen that fears the repercussions of being caught in possession of an “illegal” weapon? Of course, this is the downfall of each and every “common sense gun control” initiative; criminals who, by definition, don’t particularly care to abide by laws, would not be affected. Only those who actually NEED the guns in question would, and they would be adversely affected the worst, as we have seen in the poorer neighborhoods that have been victimized the hardest by the far left anti-law enforcement movement.
With these facts in mind, the move to secure any facility would not be the broadest possible measure, confiscating all guns, but the narrowest action, hardening with armed protection the facilities. Uvalde happened because of a door propped open. Coventry had locked glass doors that were shot to pieces. There would have been the place for an internal reactionary force that would respond to the gunfire. The Nashville killer rejected other targets because they contained defenses; she picked a soft target. It would be far easier to eliminate the soft targets than it would be to confiscate 400,000,000 guns.
Do the SMART thing, not the politically beneficial thing.
Yet you insist that data bases of such problems cannot be compiled and used to screen all potential gun purchasers; that databases that already exist cannot be used. You won’t allow credit card purchase codes that would promptly alert authorities to worrisome people and patterns. Efforts to legislate those safeguards have been fought every inch of the way.
Wittingly or not, you’re a tool of the gun industry.
That would be tyrannical, and against 2A.
Never going to happen.
Armed teachers and school guards ends this. Only Democrats seem to want this to go on.
Have any of the recent mass shooters been part of a “well regulated militia”?
Having the government regulate the militia that exists to prevent the government from becoming tyrannical is not what this says:
The school shooter in Nashville was a criminal, radicalized by paganism to commit genocide against Christians.
It’s what all this LGBT nonsense is about: replacing Christianity with the usual demonic counterfeit.
We are:
Born again.
Having our minds transformed.
The evil demon gods are:
Woke
Changing the body instead of the mind.
This has all been done before.
Totally radicalized by the left. Only the left promotes this type of deviancy insisting that one can change their biological gender.
God created only two genders, full stop.
greg isn’t willing to put his offering on the altar to see who takes it.
Wrong. We simply don’t trust leftists, who have already weaponized the FBI, DOJ, IRS, EPA,and anything else they get their hands on with that information or power. Actually, it is YOU and YOURS who oppose a database of violent activity by students from being compiled. This would identify many of those who have gone on to violent actions. You also oppose holding criminals accountable for their crimes.
You on the left are not to be trusted with such information. Remember when newspapers printed the names and addresses of lawful gun owners? Remember LA releasing the names of CHL holders? The left just LOVES to put people in danger and, if you think any of that would actually be a good idea, thank your fellow fascists for making it impossible and unreasonable.
YOU are a tool of the murderers.
Meet America’s future voters: Thousands of Nashville students walk out and rally a week after school shooting
A small, small minority of radicalized youth are not something you should base your “future” on.
Unless you want to them to be your SA, which is most likely true.
Meanwhile, Trump has about 100 million legal voters waiting to pull the lever in 2024.
Thousands of angry kids in a single red-state city is the writing on the wall.
Shows they are encouraged by ignorant adults they should be in school, learning why we have a 2nd amendment.
Yeah, kids like to skip school for any reason. They should protest the left’s cultivation of mental illness and promoting violence but, of course, they’ve been indoctrinated to dance to the leftist tune.
Yes…the writing on the wall being that your angry cult is just like those before it.
Now trans people are killing Christians.
And in case you’re still going on about “Russia helped Trump in the 2016 election”, we know that’s not true.
You people are traitors.
Yeah, that’s what Democrat “election integrity” is.
Astroturf
Any “votes” for this is proof we’re under attack from vile, cheating terrorists taking over our country.
https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1643019761272381440
(Hint: I posted something from MTG because I know you’ll lose your sh*t with a bunch of moronic, scripted “pull the string in my back” outrage. Are you stupid enough to take the bait?)
Yeah.