Whatever else the suspect in Wednesday’s fatal, tragic shooting at Spokane County’s Freeman High School did, his acts demonstrated the fatal flaw – call it the dirty little secret – of gun control laws.
The incident has been detailed meticulously by the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
They don’t stop determined individuals from committing the very crimes those laws are supposed to prevent. Now is a good time to ask the gun prohibition lobby, which will undoubtedly use this crime to push for additional restrictions by asking how many more youngsters must die in their fund-raisers, this question: How many more youngsters must suffer before anti-gunners admit their restrictive proposals have failed? KXLY News has details on activities in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting.
The one dead student has been identified as Sam Strahan. By all accounts, he courageously attempted to intervene, but was fatally shot for his effort.
The suspect, identified by the Spokane Spokesman Review as Caleb Sharpe, was reportedly tackled and subdued by school custodian Joe Bowen.
Possible gun law violations may include some variation of, but may not be limited to:
- Bringing guns to a gun-free school zone;
- Carrying guns on a school bus;
- Minor in possession of a concealed handgun;
- Illegal discharge of a firearm on school property;
- Assault with a deadly weapon;
- Murder
The case also was a text book demonstration of something Second Amendment advocates have been preaching since Sandy Hook: When seconds count, police are minutes away.
As the Spokesman Review story noted, “By the time law enforcement officers arrived at the school, Sharpe was immobile. And by the time most of Spokane had heard about the events at Freeman, he was in the back seat of a patrol car.”
How long will it be before gun control proponents use this incident to push for a “safe storage” law requiring all firearms to be locked up all the time?
Liberty Park Press reached out to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office for information on the type and caliber of firearms involved, and where and how they were acquired.
Three years ago, voters approved Initiative 594, the so-called “universal background check” law that was supposed to help prevent crime by requiring background checks for every firearms transfer. Passed following a $10 million essentially one-sided campaign financed largely by wealthy Seattle-area elitists and anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, I-594 has to its credit a string of failures that include most notably Cascade Mall in Burlington (no background check because the gun was taken without permission) and Mukilteo (shooter passed a background check).
The suspect reportedly passed notes warning his friends that he was planning to do “something stupid,” the newspaper reported. That suggests Wednesday’s shooting was not a spur-of-the-moment act. An investigation will try to sort this out.
