The gun control lobby has again demonstrated its disregard for victims of violence.
Last week its “Sandy Hook Advisory Commission” proposed that to stop mass shootings what we need is more strict regulation of homeschooling.
The shooters at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Columbine High School in Colorado, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Arizona, and at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, were all in their early 20s (or teens, in the case of Columbine).
And all of them attended public schools.
Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, attended 9th, 10th, and 11th grades at public Newton High School, through age 16.
For his senior year, Lanza’s mother took him out of Newton High and he took courses at the public Western Connecticut State University (earning a 3.26). Then he got his GED.
It wasn’t until three years later, at age 20, when Lanza committed the Newton murders.
But to the insane gun control lobby, Lanza was “home-schooled,” and stopping gun violence requires increased regulations of homeschooling for “children with significant emotional, social or behavioral problems.”
Right. Home-schooling caused Sandy Hook, and government control of children will stop others. Government control of children worked so wonderfully for Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, James Eagan Holmes, Seung-Hui Cho, Jared Lee Loughner, and Adam Lanza himself through 11th grade.
Government control keeps kids so safe in Chicago, that under Rahm Emanuel they stopped telling the public how many victims went to public schools.
Funny that gun control activists didn’t look at any of these facts and call for kids to be educated at home instead of in public schools.
For the gun control lobby, nothing is too irrelevant, illogical, or unhelpful to victims of violence to prevent that proposal from being adopted as a gun violence “solution.” Their proposals count as “gun control” even if they focus solely on law-abiding, mentally-well citizens; or impose layers of restrictions that have no correlation with reducing violence; or are potentially counterproductive–like taking more kids away from parental education.
The gun control lobby’s sole criterion for promoting a policy is to make sure it expands government control, attacks traditional freedoms, and perpetuates the lobby’s influence.
This demonstrates how misguided some Catholics are when they insist that “Church teaching” favors “gun control.”
In this distorted view, anything categorized as “gun control” should elicit Catholic support, without the need to examine what the proposal actually calls for or whether it sensibly reduces violence. Even if it does stupid, unrelated things like restricting homeschooling.
By this rationale, the Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference, the USCCB, and all Catholics must now support increased state regulation of homeschooling–or else they are “dissenters” who want more dead kids.
Instead, real Church teaching favors the sanctity of human life and the defense of one’s family. It leaves firearm policy to the common sense approach of the Catholic laity. And it recognizes parents as being their children’s primary educators.
The gun control lobby’s agenda has no inherent connection to any of these interests, except perhaps hostility.