Congress could pass sweeping new gun control laws that would change gun ownership in this country as we know it. And it wouldn’t make a bit of difference if the authorities failed to uniformly uphold and enforce these new laws.
Case in point, look no further than what happened during the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
When Coral Springs police officers arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14 in the midst of the school shooting crisis, many officers were surprised to find not only that Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, had not entered the building, but that three other Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were also outside the school and had not entered, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. The deputies had their pistols drawn and were behind their vehicles, the sources said, and not one of them had gone into the school.
While Nikolas Cruz was murdering children with his legally purchased AR-15 assault rifle, sheriff deputies were hiding behind their vehicles doing nothing. How they can hear the distinctive crack on an AR-15 from the inside of a school filled with children and not charge the school is beyond me. We have laws against murder. Cowardly sheriff deputies knew the murder of children was taking place, yet they chose not to even try to stop it.
It doesn’t matter what laws are passed if those laws aren’t enforced, it’s meaningless. Once again, you cannot count on the police or law enforcement to do their job. Congress could ban ownership of all firearms, yet if law enforcement chose not to confiscate every gun, but instead only some guns, the new law would again be meaningless.
We now have over 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country, yet we’ve had comprehensive immigration laws on the books for decades. The reason we have so many undocumented immigrants living, working, and having children here is that for decades our law enforcement officials have failed to enforce the law in a uniform way. Worse, we’ve known this was going on, yet we chose to look the other way and ignore it.
The sad and unfortunate truth is that if you want to ensure what happened to the children of at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School doesn’t happen to you, you have to protect yourself with your own gun. Counting on the police to protect you is a gamble. The cops may come to your aid with guns drawn, or they may cower behind their vehicles like they did at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.