As the nation digests news about another mass shooting in a public school, the reaction of national Democrats has been politically predictable.
There are the expected, strident calls for more gun control. The increasingly shrill demands from Democrats that the country disregard a core freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.
And what’s equally predictable is the fact that some of the loudest voices among Democrats for gun control have a good deal less concern for student safety when it suits the progressive agenda.
But some of the exact same politicians who started reflexively calling Tuesday for more gun control while the news of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was still breaking have also been some of the loudest demanding schools be stripped of police to appease the most radical fringes of their party.
The demonstrably duplicitous Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and equally untrustworthy Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, along with Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, among other Democrats, took strident stands Tuesday in favor of gun control supposedly to protect children — yet their interest in protecting children doesn’t go as far as having a cop around.
In fact, it’s just the opposite. To liberals like this, cops are part of the problem.
Two years ago, as Forbes reported at the time, Warren and Murphy in the Senate, along with Omar and fellow “squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts in the House, introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of federal money to support police officers in school.
The idea was to appease the Black Lives Matter wing of the Democratic Party — the “mostly peaceful” types who think having officers in schools means there are more student criminals, as opposed to the more logical idea that having more cops in schools means more criminals get caught.
“Police shouldn’t be in schools,” Murphy said in a statement then that summed up the liberal case. “There are plenty of better ways to ensure that our schools are safe places to learn, and Congress needs to understand how police in schools ends up with the wrong kids getting arrested for minor disciplinary actions and resources being drained from more effective programs.”
Do you think the latest push for gun control will be successful?
Well, put aside the fact that “wrong kids getting arrested” is doubtless a Democratic chimera up there with the supposedly vast numbers of unarmed minorities who are shot by police. The latter number is vanishingly small, as the Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald has shown, and it’s a good bet the former is as well.
Public school administrators, in a profession dominated by Democrats, are not exactly famous for their willingness to have innocent kids arrested (unless it involves a breach of COVID regulations, of course).
The reluctance of authorities in Broward County, Florida, to arrest Nicolas Cruz for various criminal misbehavior before he shot up Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 is a pretty good indication of that.
As any bar bouncer worth his tequila salt understands, the principal benefit of having enforcers around isn’t so much punishing rule-breakers as it is deterring rule-breaking in the first place. The presence of police has the same effect. And the lack of police means a lack of deterrence.
Tragically, that deterrence didn’t happen on Tuesday. When the gunman, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, arrived at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, he was met by a school resource officer. Ramos shot the officer, according to ABC News, which cited unnamed law enforcement sources.
Two Uvalde police officers were also unable to stop Ramos, who entered the building and began the slaughter.
The crime brought out the usual cries for gun control from the usual sources, including Warren and Murphy (who took melodrama to new lows on the Senate floor).
To Omar, the fact that Ramos was able to enter the building despite the police presence was proof positive that having police around is not good at all.
“Honestly, every Republican who said this is how you stop mass shootings needs to be voted out of office,” she wrote in a Twitter post.
“Their pro-gun agenda is dangerous and it’s time for sensible gun reform laws in American.
“Enough.”
Honestly, every Republican who said this is how you stop mass shootings needs to be voted out of office.
Their pro-gun agenda is dangerous and it’s time for sensible gun reform laws in American.
Enough. https://t.co/h56ZCrELBA
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 25, 2022
Twitter being Twitter, she had plenty of supporters, of course. But there was pushback, too.
Pro gun is not an agenda, it’s a constitutional right..
— DannyR (@Bornin65) May 25, 2022
You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands. I’m a law abiding citizen that’s scared to leave my house without it. This is the reality of living in Minnesota.
— Cyleren1 (@Cyleren) May 25, 2022
Great explain to me Congresswoman how do you get someone to follow another legal gun law if they are willing to commit murder? Stop using heinous acts of a murderer to pander to those unwilling to answer the above question or are too dumb to use logic.
— Joey Juarez (@MexicanMojoYo) May 25, 2022
Omar’s post was specious reasoning on its face, though it won’t be surprising at all to hear it become an argument for the far left. No sane person would declare all of society should be bereft of police protection because cops aren’t capable of stopping all incidents of crime. (Actually, the “defund the police” far-left Democrats would, but that demographic doesn’t generally qualify as “sane.”)
The most predictable effect of removing police from school campuses almost certainly would be more incidents like the one in Texas, and lasting longer (at least until Americans either stopped sending their kids to school or started showing up armed to guard them themselves). In other words, more children dying.
Fortunately for the students of America, the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act has gone nowhere since its introduction in either the House or the Senate, even though Democrats control both chambers.
Obviously, even the party comrades of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer know a dead-deal loser when they see it.
There’s no way around the fact that the system failed in Uvalde on Tuesday. There’s no way around 19 murdered children and two adults.
But there’s also no way around the fact that Democrats calling for an end to a police presence on school campuses are doing nothing to enhance safety.
The fact that some of the same Democrats are calling for the American public to be disarmed as well through blatantly unconstitutional gun control measures is not helping matters. In fact, it’s doing the opposite.
And that’s all too predictable, too.
