The Left insists that the government must have complete and total control over guns in order to protect Americans from school shootings. But on Friday, we found out that the FBI knew full well about the shooter in the Parkland, Florida school massacre . . . and did nothing. TWICE.
First, they were informed in September that a YouTube user with the shooter’s real name stated, “Im going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI didn’t bother following up until after the Parkland massacre; they didn’t share the information with local authorities.
Now The Wall Street Journal reports that in January, a caller told the FBI about the shooter’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior and disturbing social-media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.” The information could have been investigated as a “potential threat to life.” Instead, it was ignored and was not even forwarded to the Miami field office for further investigation.
This is utterly inexcusable. But it keeps happening, again and again.
Former FBI Director James Comey told reporters in July 2015 that the agency failed to stop the Charleston church shooter from purchasing a gun because of flaws in the FBI’s background check system — the shooter had been arrested for a felony in February, but the FBI didn’t enter it into the federal database.
And in November 2017, we found out that the Air Force didn’t report the Texas church shooter’s domestic violence conviction to the FBI — a report that would have prevented him from purchasing weapons under current law.
As Jim Geraghty of National Review points out, see something, say something only works if the law enforcement community does something. And here they did nothing. We know that the Parkland shooter’s home was visited by deputies some 39 times since 2010, that he was expelled from school for disciplinary reasons, that his classmates thought he was violent, that school officials believed he had been banned from campus. That didn’t stop him from purchasing a gun, walking onto campus, and murdering 17 people.
And Democrats and media suddenly expect that law-abiding citizens will want to give up their guns to a state utterly incapable of preventing mass violence even after being warned over and over and over again?