Since the tragic Valentine’s Day shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the left has renewed their demand for gun control, and the media has promoted hysteria and false information about gun violence.
While students nationwide are protesting for increased gun control regulations that infringe upon our Second Amendment rights, one legislator is fighting against the left’s campaign of misinformation.
Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville has been working to protect our gun rights since he was elected in 2014. But Neville is working from a unique perspective while fighting the left’s gun-grabs – he is a survivor of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.
Fox News reported:
[Neville] has introduced the bill annually since he was elected in 2014. Previous attempts have been turned down. Neville, a Republican, told The Times the current law “creates a so-called gun free zone in every K-12 public school.”
“Time and time again we point to the one common theme with mass shootings, they occur in gun-free zones,” Neville told The Times.
“Well, the current policy of gun-free zones actually invites these kinds of attacks. It’s not a realistic policy and it sends a message that our students are soft targets. So I want to end gun-free zones and actually allow good people to defend our students,” he said.
He added law-abiding citizens should be able “to defend themselves and most importantly our children from the worst-case scenarios.”
Mandating schools, churches, and local meeting halls as “Gun Free Zones” sends a message to mass shooters they will meet little resistance. These laws prevent law-abiding citizens like teachers from being armed, and thereby increase the likelihood of more tragedies like the one in Florida of occurring.
Neville firmly believes that more of his classmates at Columbine High School would have survived the mass shooting at their school had staff members been armed and able to defend themselves and other students.
In fact, it is almost always a legal gun owner in the right place at the right time who prevents these active shooting situations from escalating further until law enforcement can arrive.
Under current Colorado state law, concealed carry permit holders may bring their weapons on school grounds, but they must remain locked in their cars – of little use when a shooter has hundreds of potential victims trapped inside.
Neville has introduced his bill every year since his election, but it has not garnered enough support to pass. He is now reintroducing it with the hopes that our nation will finally do something to allow citizens to protect themselves – and our children.
Many of the nation’s youth have fallen prey to the leftist gun control rhetoric because they don’t understand the real causes behind gun violence and are continually denied the proper information by the liberal media.
Business Insider reported:
But many students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become vocal advocates of the opposite approach, launching the Never Again movement to call for stricter gun regulations and background checks and organizing walkouts, “die-ins,” and a protest next month in Washington, DC, called March for Our Lives.
The left’s call for so-called “common sense” gun laws makes no sense at all. In taking away citizens’ rights to protect themselves, mass shooters will continue to prey on this weakness.
The answers lie in identifying mentally disturbed individuals by carefully monitoring warning signs – something authorities completely ignored in the case of the Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz.
When our children are away from us in school, we have no choice but to trust our teachers and school administrators to keep them safe from harm. With current “Gun Free Zone” laws in every school across the nation, children will be at risk until bills like Neville’s are passed into law.
What do you think of Representative Neville’s bill to rid schools of the dangerous “Gun Free Zone” label? Leave us your thoughts in the comments.