Florida Shooting Shows Government Cannot Protect Americans

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting and the wave of well-organized and financed protests using emotionally traumatized students, the Florida Legislature is set to vote on a range of legal responses — including a series of gun restrictions.

This, from a state that has some of the strongest Second Amendment protections in the union, should cause some real alarm. The pressure on legislators up for re-election in November is immense, from the demonstrators, anti-gun activists, their media allies, and the public consuming it all. But it is totally and purposely misdirected.

The real blame in this atrocity — after the deranged shooter himself, never forget that — is the total collapse of the governmental institutions charged with protecting the defenseless students collected into an unprotected public school.

Let’s recap how the Parkland shooting has played out politically. Because make no mistake, it is now allpolitical in Florida and nationally, and it is driven by the activist left and the media pursuing their anti-gun agendas — and not by the facts as they are being revealed.

The FBI failed twice to take any steps when informed about the Parkland shooter being a threat to do exactly this, by his own family members. This is hardly the worst, as the FBI gets a lot of bum tips, but it is still a failure.

Worse, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office failed to take any steps when called to his home 39 times, including for violent and threatening behavior, and being told he had guns. That is an extraordinary number of red flags missed or blown off by local law enforcement. The FBI and the Sheriff not only did nothing, but apparently they did not communicate with each other with this information.

Worse yet, the sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school did nothing, standing outside with his gun while the killer roamed the halls killing defenseless people.

And then very worst of all, when three more Broward deputies showed up, all of them stayed outside while the monster continued killing inside. They did nothing until Coral Springs police arrived on the scene, at which point the killer had stopped and was slipping away.

With four deputies all doing this, it is clear it was not cowardice. There are just too many good cops for that to be the case. They were almost assuredly following some sort of policy by the uber-incompetent and morally dubious Broward County Sheriff, a Democrat with a history of corruption charges.

The collapse of law enforcement and school security in the Parkland shooting (such as cameras being on a 20-minute delay, not a live feed, sowing more confusion) is perhaps the worst in modern American history. This shooting was eminently preventable, and should never have happened. The systemic collapse on the part of multiple government organizations failed the students, their families, friends and community.

And it will again.

But the entire media and political focus is on the weapon the killer used. It’s not the killer, not the FBI, not the deputies, not the school. It’s the weapon.

None of these protests are about the utter failure of the law enforcement community in Broward County. That’s because there is an agenda, using impressionable, traumatized youth. What there is not with any of these well-orchestrated protests is any effort to look at cause-and-effect solutions in this shooting. They are staring us in the face, but being ignored for the ongoing anti-gun political agenda.

And finally, the pursuit of gun bans and even gun confiscation, as has been suggested repeatedly in the wake of Parkland — using dubious example of Australia as the success of gun confiscation — means Americans would have to simply trust their defense to the same law enforcement and government systems that failed Parkland students so badly. Even in the best of times, police or deputies are several minutes away from a murderous rampage — or a home invasion. In the worst times, apparently they wait until the murder spree has ended.

Compare and contrast Parkland to the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting last year where a civilian heard the attack, got his semi-automatic rifle and took down the mass killer at the church before cops could get to the scene. What was the gun he used to stop the slaughter? An AR-15, the exact type of weapon that is being aimed at for banning by activists and Democrats.

As the protests and politics continues to play out, remember where the real blame lies — after the evil shooter — when you hear all the calls for gun regulations. And ask how you will defend yourself once all our non-musket guns are confiscated. Because that is the only end-game for the anti-gun activists, protestations to the side.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Behind Cruz’s Rampage: Obama’s School-Leniency Policy | RealClearInvestigations

Parkland and the culture of leniency

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. Please visit The Revolutionary Act Channel.

---