The Potential School Shooting That You Never Heard About

A terrible misconception about gun proponents, perpetuated by gun control activists, is that gun proponents don't care about terrible tragedies like the Newtown shooting. "After all," they claim, "if gun-toting Americans really cared about these tragedies, they would do anything to stop them, even if it meant giving up their precious weapons. The lives of children are more important than the ability to own a gun." Among the many fallacies of this argument, one in particular is the assumption that gun proponents, by virtue of their belief in guns, aren't looking for a solution to the problem. This assumption could not be further from the truth. Gun proponents are not heartless; they do not value ownership of a gun over the lives of other people. The difference is that gun proponents fully believe that the responsible ownership of guns promotes self-sufficiency by enabling the individual to protect and defend himself instead of depending on the government to do it. The other difference is many gun proponents would rather not waste time implementing ineffective solutions while waiting for more people to die.

On December 21, 2012, a 16 year old girl posted to a youtube channel moderated by a Toronto college student for the transgendered community that she had plans to shoot and kill students at her high school. She wrote that she could easily bring a gun onto school grounds. The moderator quickly alerted Canadian authorities, who tracked the most to Maricopa County in Arizona and alerted the Sheriff's Department there. Within three hours of the moderator alerting authorities, Sheriff's Deputies were at the girl's house, where she admitted to them in front of her parents that she had posted the comments and they were true. She told investigators that she planned to "kill everyone." 

What is exceptionally interesting in this particular case is the contrast between how information is reported and what information is omitted when comparing news sources. CBC News, which has had a history of being accused of liberal bias, reporting through MSN News Canada, reported that three guns, to include a semi-automatic handgun, were found in the girl's home but released to the girl's father for safekeeping. An Arizona radio station, KTAR, using an Associated Press article, reported that the weapons had been found by police in the home, but had already been secured with trigger locks on each gun and all three were locked in a gun cabinet. That's interesting information that was omitted in the CBC piece. Canoe News, another Canadian news source, reported the issue most completely, stating that her parents told investigators that "the teen has a history of mental health issues, and they'd become alarmed when she recently started asking where the guns were kept in the house. Her father placed trigger locks on the weapons -- a semi-automatic .40 caliber, a .357 revolver and a .22 revolver - and locked them in a gun safe."

While it is impossible to prove whether those important omissions were intentional, it is obvious that they change the way a reader or listener can interpret who was responsible for averting the massacre. Was it the alert youtube channel moderator who notified authorities, or was it the observant and responsible parents who got suspicious of their own daughter and locked up their weapons? 

Maybe it is observant and responsible parents who are the real solution to the problem. Maybe if we took more responsibility for our own actions and failures instead of being so willing to give that responsibility to the government, fewer troubled teens would have the opportunity to abuse firearms. Gun owners have the ultimate responsibility to secure their guns and control access to them. That is not to say that we should mandate stringent storage requirements that all weapons must be unloaded, locked, and separated from ammunition; that negates the very reason for the gun's existence--self-defense. But gun owners who are reckless in allowing mentally-ill or unstable individuals to have access to their firearms should be held responsible for anything those guns are used. There are plenty of good stories about kids using their parents' gun to defend themselves after being educated and trained in its use; this is a good story about parents who weighed the risk of burglary/kidnapping versus the risk that their daughter would use the guns illegally and made the right decision.