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<![CDATA[Shannon Watts]]>

Anti-gun activists blame constitutional carry for Nashville school shooting

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Gun control activists have a new villain to point to in the wake of the shootings at Nashville’s Covenant School on Monday; constitutional carry. Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts is one of several anti-gun activists who’ve been pointing the finger at Tennessee’s permitless carry law, insinuating that without the law the shooting never would have happened.

“Tennessee @GovBillLee hasn’t had time yet to tweet his thoughts and prayers for Covenant School, but when he does, remind him that this is exactly why police and citizens opposed the permitless carry bill he signed into law at a gun maker’s factory in 2021,” Ms Watts tweeted.

Mr Lee signed legislation in 2021 that allowed for citizens to carry a loaded handgun either concealed or openly without a permit, but not rifles or shotguns. The suspect in the Nashville school shooting, identified as a 28-year-old woman, was carrying two assault-style rifles and a handgun, according to police.

Ms Watts criticised lax gun rules.

“SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ARE NOT ACTS OF NATURE,” she tweeted. “They are senseless, preventable acts of man enabled by weak gun laws and lawmakers. This doesn’t have to be our new normal. Our children don’t have to be sacrificed in exchange for gun industry profits. We can stop this.”

MSNBC’s Haynes Brown chimed in with similar arguments, pointing again to permitless carry along with several other pro-2A bills under consideration in the Tennessee legislature this year.

The state already has few restrictions in place as it is: no waiting period between between purchasing and receiving a firearm; no license or permit required to own a gun; no need to register a gun with the state; no need for a permit to carry a handgun, open or concealed, if you’re over the age of 21.

And yet Tennessee Republicans are still trying to remove the barriers that remain. As part of a settlement in a lawsuit from the Firearms Policy Coalition, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti cut a deal in January that made it legal for 18-year-olds to openly carry firearms. Last week, the state Senate passed a bill to codify that agreement into law. State Rep. Chris Todd, who supports the Senate bill, has called it a “civil right,” ignoring arguments that expanding access to guns for teenagers could lead to more killings.

That matches with the rhetoric around “constitutional carry,” the gun lobby’s lofty way of saying that no permit should be needed to carry a concealed firearm. The doctrine is the basis of another bill that Todd is backing that would allow open-carry of any firearm, including high-powered rifles. Even testimony against the bill from the Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security hasn’t dimmed support from Republicans.

The cowardly killer who targeted elementary school kids at the Covenant School had a manifesto, maps, and had committed a lot of time and planning to commit mass murder. Do gun control activists like Watts really believe that if Tennessee wasn’t a permitless carry state they would have called the whole thing off? I highly doubt it. In fact, it sounds like the killer actually scouted out a second location for another attack, but decided against it because there was too much security. They were looking for as soft a target as possible to carry out their monstrous plot.

No, this is yet another example of Watts playing politics with an unspeakable tragedy. Florida is set to approve its own permitless carry law this week, and anti-gun activists are already starting to create a narrative that they can deploy as a last ditch effort to derail the bill, or at the very least deploy when Gov. Ron DeSantis signs the bill into law. Permitless carry had nothing to do with Monday’s school shooting, but anti-gun activists need the public to be terrified over the prospect of Florida becoming the 26th permitless carry state, so that’s what they’re running with.

We’ll be talking more about this false narrative on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co with BA contributor Ryan Petty, who has become a staunch advocate for school safety after his daughter Alaina was murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. Ryan agrees with Watts on one point: these attacks are preventable, but not through more gun control laws. We’ll be talking about the substantive steps that schools can take to harden up security, as well as the importance (and ability) to recognize and respond to these threats before they are carried out.

Right on script, gun control activists use Michigan State University Attack to further their agenda

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An almost unthinkable tragedy unfolded on the campus of Michigan State University last night. Shots rang out on campus as a 43-year old man (Bearing Arms is not naming the alleged perpetrator), believed to have no affiliation with the university, walked onto campus and as of the publishing of this article, killed 3 students and wounded 5. We make no apology for our prayers for these victims and their families. For them, a nightmare has just begun. As they awaken from that nightmare, they will want to know what happened and why.

The investigation is underway, the killer left a note near his lifeless body, a victim of his own cowardice, he took his life moments after the massacre.

As if an off-camera director of this nightmare yelled “action!”, gun control activists and Democrat politicians have already come out for calls to stop these campus attacks. Last night, before much was known about the attack, the assailant or the victims, perennial grifter Shannon Watts was already doing a fundraising dance on the memories of the victims. Her tweet tirade included this call for more gun control and an appeal to text her organization to join with them and joining them means acquiescing to their never-ending fundraising pleas.

Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin was justifiably angry. In a press conference with members of law enforcement and Michigan Governor Whitmer she said, “I am filled with rage.” She continued, “you either care about protecting kids, or you don’t…Please don’t tell me you care about the safety of children if you are not willing to have a conversation about keeping them safe in a place that should be a sanctuary.”

Unfortunately, it’s Democrats who refuse to engage in conversation, preferring it would seem to pass unconstitutional gun control measures, in defiance of recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, and despite mounting evidence that the gun control measures they back, would have little to no impact on these attacks or in reducing overall gun violence. Why won’t they have an impact? Because they target law-abiding Americans, not the criminals responsible for most gun crimes.

Representative Slotkin’s words belie her intentions. She refers to the campus of Michigan State and other schools as sanctuaries and they rightly should be. They should be places where students can learn and teachers can pass on their knowledge and wisdom to a younger generation. But we don’t live in that world, and I challenge Representative to name one gun control law that would fundamentally change the world we occupy. Name two. Name three. She can’t, so she won’t. In fact, that’s the point. Representative Slotkin is not interested in a conversation about solutions because she’s motivated only by a desire to say she “did something” so she can return to power after the next election.

But this begs the question. How should we protect our sanctuaries? Well, for starters we wouldn’t hang “Gun Free Zone” sign on the outside and call it a day, hoping the “bad guys” will obey a piece of plastic. We wouldn’t leave it to chance that a few armed security personnel could intervene before harm is done. No, if we truly believed they are sanctuaries we would protect them with real security and take measures to deter and prevent their violation. If we became aware of someone with intentions to attack a sanctuary, we’d engage with authorities to prevent it. Right? Given the opportunity to stop an imminent threat, we’d be prepared to stop an attack ourselves.

But more often than not, this doesn’t happen. And it appears that the Michigan State attack is another in a long line of preventable tragedies.  This attacker showed the warning signs that so many of these cowards do. But why was nothing done?

The Detroit News is reporting this attacker had a long history of criminal activity and should have been prohibited from acquiring a firearm.  But it appears weak on crime prosecutors allowed him to plead down the charges.  “[The shooter] was sentenced in November 2019 to 12 months probation. In October 2020, six additional months were added to his probation, according to court records. The addition was meant to allow him to complete the terms of the probation order, the records said. His probation period concluded in May 2021. [The shooter] was barred from having a weapon “of any type” during the term of his probation, according to a Nov. 26, 2019 court order.”  Would yesterday have unfolded differently had he been convicted of the original charges?  The likely answer is yes because he would have been a convicted felon and barred from purchasing a firearm.  We’ll have to wait for more details from the investigation to confirm the origin of the firearm in question.

He also like to shoot at targets in his back yard despite living in the city and being reported to police on multiple occasions.  From the Detroit Times, 

Paul Rodney Tucker, who lives around the corner from [the attacker], said he’d run into [him] more than once at the party store and described him as “wild” and a “hell-raiser.”

“I knew he lived at that house because there was constant trouble there,” he said. 

Tucker also heard gunshot target practice from the home last summer and believed police had been called there before.

“I told my dad it was a semi-automatic pistol,” Tucker said of gunshots heard last summer. “Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. It wasn’t firecrackers.”

Megan and Tyler Bender, who live on the same street as [the shooter], said he moved in with his father about a year ago. They said [the attacker’s] father, is a scrapper well-known in the neighborhood.

“He’s never done any harm to anyone,” Megan Bender said. “He’s just an old man, minds his business.”

But police had been called to the residence before because of the sound of gunshots, Bender said.

Bender said [the shooter] would fire out of the back door of the home, she believed for target practice.

Until gun-control activists and Democrat politicians are willing to get tough on violent criminals that use firearms I’ll be waiting, along with millions of law-abiding Americans, for that conversation that Representative Slotkin promises.  And I’ll be praying this nightmare will stop.