Stop Blaming the Wrong People

Ah, gun control. THE topic of discussion nowadays, right? Everywhere you go, people seem to be talking about guns- more specifically, the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida. As of right now, it seems to be that you can't go on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, you can't even go out to dinner without hearing about the Parkland tragedy. Talking about a tragedy is not a bad thing, the bad thing is that people aren't making sense of it. On television, not even two days ago, I've seen countless kids from all over America blame President Trump for this shooting. A student said, quote unquote, "President Trump, you control the House of Representatives, you control the Senate, and you control the Executive, you haven't taken a single bill for mental healthcare or gun control and passed it,". Now, to clear things up a bit, Trump does not control the House, he does not control the Senate, as they are independent branches of government. Why are news outlets pulling these high school kids to speak openly about gun control, when clearly they do not know the simple basics of government? CNN, MBCSN and Fox News have been interviewing students from Parkland to see what they have to say about gun control. Fox News had interviewed a group of students to show what exactly those kids wanted, the students went on to explain that they will be having a march, "March For Our Lives", being held March 24th in ALL major cities in America. The student said it was to "beg for our lives". The problem with this, is that you have nobody to 'beg' to. There have been many suggestions on how exactly we, as Americans can stop these major school shootings and shootings in general from happening. The answer is not to ban guns, nor is the answer to make more gun laws. You can enforce the gun laws that America already has, instead of piling more and more laws up until somebody sees them, but that also will not stop these shootings. Begging and caring are not going to stop people from killing one another. The same student also said, "You're either with us, or against us," and that, is also incorrect. No sane person in the United States wants to see innocent kids or people get killed, no sane person anywhere wants that, but people of all over are allowed to have their own, individual views on the situation. Just because certain people don't agree on banning assault rifles, it does not make those people any less valid in this fight against violence. These students are not experts on gun policy just because their school was targeted, we are allowed to feel sympathy and grieve with these students because, yes, they have gone through something tragic, but just because they're victims of an awful act does not make them and their views correct. The media shouldn't make you feel like a horrible person for disagreeing with these victims, but that is what they are set out to do. None of the gun control measures being proposed by the democratic side would have prevented this shooting from taking place. Proposing to ban assault rifles would get you nowhere, considering the shooting that took place at Virginia Tech was done with a handgun. Stop blaming the wrong people for what took place in Parkland, Florida, there is one person to blame, and that is the shooter. There is something called the Gun Violence Restraining Order, that David French proposed, which I've found a brief explanation of in an article titled, "The Gun Violence Restraining Order - Responding to a Libertarian Critique", it states, "As I outlined in my piece, a GVRO empowers a person in a close relationship with a gun-owner to seek a court order that allows police to temporarily seize guns when there is evidence that the gun-owner is a danger to himself or others". This proposal is something I believe many people can agree on, because the gun is not the problem, the person possessing the weapon is. This is a good idea, because there has always been a lead, or multiple leads lining up to a major shooting or massacre. In Florida, people knew of the shooter's possession of weapons and his unstable mental state, with the GVRO in place, think of what possibly could have been avoided. All in all, we should not be blaming President Trump for the Parkland shooting, we should not always side with a group because we feel bad for them, and we really need to consider the options if anything is going to happen with gun control in the future. My heart goes out to the friends and families of shooting victims across America, as nobody deserves to become victim of mindless violence.