A lesson on guns for the misinformed

It is counterproductive when uninformed or misinformed members of the media begin to pontificate how guns should be controlled to prevent another school shooting tragedy. An editorial in the Keynoter and Reporter was particularly upset over an idea in an outdoor sporting catalog that advertised “high-capacity clips” for .308 ammunition.

Let’s get some facts straight. First, they aren’t clips. Clips went out in World War II and Korea with the Garland M1 rifle.

Second: .308 ammunition is not used in AR-25-type rifles. Ninety percent of .308 is used in bolt-action weapons for hunting or in law enforcement as a sniper round.

Third: The AR-15 rifle is a far cry from the M4 platform used for combat. It is close to the Armalite M16 (which, by the way, the A in AR-15 stands for), not assault. Many modern firearms, including almost 100 percent of pistols, are semi-automatic and magazine-fed with up to 20 rounds.

I defy anyone to present a lw that would have stopped Parkland. Outlaw AR-15 rifles? What about the $10 million that are in circulation? Not to mention other magazine-fed semi-automatic long guns or pistols. The gun genie is out of the bottle and there is little chance of it going back in.

All the more reason it is so tragic that our best weapon for stopping mass shootings in schools or anywhere was not used by the FBI: See something, say something. We had this psycho! He should have been behind locked doors somewhere by Jan. 6, 24 hours after the very descriptive warning. Three generations of law enforcement in my family and yet I am ashamed of their response to this and how it was handled.

Congress isn’t going to stop this. We are. Our kids, our neighbors or fellow workers, social media. See something? Say something to law enforcement. I assure you they would rather check out 999 dead ends than allow one killer to go undetected. It will take everyone to dial up their spidery sense to root out these creeps.

In the meantime, harden the targets and increase the focus on mental health resources. More than 40,000 people are killed every year in car crashes and AR-15 shootings are only about 2 percent of gun killings. Yet nothing grabs us like kids being slaughtered in schools. It must compel us to make realistic changes in our society.

This story was originally published February 21, 2018 at 9:42 AM with the headline "A lesson on guns for the misinformed."