The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms came out swinging Tuesday with a response to President Joe Biden and gun prohibition lobbying groups exploiting the Nashville Covenant school rampage by declaring, “America has a mental health crisis, not a firearms crisis.”
“Firearms don’t have a brain to hate with, or a finger to pull their own trigger,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb in a prepared statement.
His remarks followed a comparatively low-key reaction from the National Rifle Association, which called for enhanced school security, as quoted by Newsweek.
“What happened Monday in Nashville should serve as a reminder that while the gun prohibition lobby and its allies in Congress want to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens,” Gottlieb said, “they are perfectly happy to let people such as the perpetrator of this rampage fall through the cracks. Now it’s being reported she was under a doctor’s care for some sort of emotional disorder.”
CCRKBA recently called on Congressional Republicans to roadblock funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “until Democrats and federal bureaucrats publicly recognize Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and stop their attacks on legal gun ownership.”
Gottlieb said Monday’s shooting, which claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adults, should be a signal to make schools “a hard target.”
“Those on the left do not want school resources officers on the job,” he said. “They argue for reducing police manpower overall while dangerous, violent people wait to prey on our most vulnerable citizens; school children and older Americans. And then they demand honest people give up their guns.
“The reason most Americans own firearms,” Gottlieb stressed, “is to protect themselves against mentally unstable, violent people and evil, dangerous criminals.”
As more details emerge about the identified shooter, Audrey Hale, a transgender woman armed with three legally-purchased firearms, the debate over gun rights is once again returning to the spotlight.
Emily Compagno, an attorney and frequent guest on Fox News, said on air during an appearance on “Outnumbered.”
“No violence, no evil at this magnitude is ever predictable…in the way that it unfolded yesterday,” Compagno said. “But unfortunately, the administration’s response is all too predictable. It’s a tone deaf, knee-jerk political reaction.”
According to published reports, Hale was armed with:
- A 9mm KelTec SUB2000 semiautomatic rifle, which folds in half for storage. It accepts pistol magazines, has a 16.25-inch barrel, and overall length of 30.5 inches.
- A 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9 EZ, an eight-round pistol with an internal hammer, thumb and grip safeties, 3.68-inch stainless steel barrel and polymer grip frame.
- A Lead Star Arms “Grunt” rifle, apparently chambered for the .300 Blackout cartridge. In an image posted on social media by the Nashville Police, Hale’s alter-ego name can be seen painted on the rear of the gun.
Gottlieb joined thousands of people praising the quick response by Nashville police to the shooting. Rather than linger outside of the building or in the hallways trying to figure out what to do, a small contingent of heavily-armed police rushed in, going room-to-room on the ground floor, then moving upstairs to their final confrontation with the shooter. Bodycam footage from officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo has been posted on the Nashville Police Facebook page.
“The country owes these courageous officers a debt of gratitude,” Gottlieb said. “They didn’t hesitate. From the time they entered the school building to the time they took down the shooter, less than four minutes elapsed. Nashville police did an outstanding job, and we are certain many more lives were saved as a result.”
“It is abundantly clear,” Gottlieb said about those rushing to exploit the incident to further a gun control agenda, “that they don’t care about safety, they just want to abridge our Constitutional rights. It is a formula for disaster and repeated tragedies like Nashville. We can do better, but we won’t do it by trampling on the rights of law-abiding citizens. Millions of American gun owners are also parents, and they can be part of the solution. But Biden and the gun ban lobby deliberately never want us at the table.”
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Out of all the ways people die, focusing on “assault weapons” will have the smallest effect on saving lives, but the biggest effect on disarming citizens. The guns they call assault weapons are used in less than 0.17% of all homicides annually. These guns are not the issue, sick and deranged people are. Of the 20 million plus AR-15’s owned in America, less than 0.004% are used in mass shootings, yet they want to take ALL 20 million away from law abiding citizens NOT to protect life but to turn self-reliant citizens into defenseless victims.
My time i the Marine Corps as a Grunt I was the ONLY portion of the Grunts that EVER used the word, “Assault” in our titles only. No weapons, no deices, only in our title. 0351 Anti-Tank Assaultman. Not even the weapons we used to assault tanks, other vehicles, bunkers, or whatever we had a desire to destroy were called, ‘assault weapons’. There were 106 Recoiless Rifles, M202 Multi-Shot Flame Weapons, LAAWS Rockets, Claymore Mines, hell, I think we may have even had a Flamethrower in the Armory and the team would carry M-16A1’s and the gunners an M-1911A1 .45… Read more »
Disarming the law-abiding will never eliminate the problem of evil in society. You cannot legislate morality to those who have no conscience of right and wrong.
It’s not a mental health crisis. It’s a lack of parenting and the teaching of morals and ethics. Through the use of necessary discipline. When a failure to abide by said rules occurs. Mental Health is just another excuse to be used as a way to deny citizens of their Constitutional Right… To Keep and Bear Arms. Especially when the ones deciding who is or isn’t mentally competent are part and parcel of the Anti 2A Zealots. Evil is the problem and a lack of dealing with that Evil has only compounded the problem. Remember…All Evil needs to be triumphant…Is… Read more »
again, firearms are inanimate objects that require human interaction to function, whether for good or evil. the shooter choose to do evil with them and the police officers choose to do good with theirs. progressives/leftists/democrats are willing to sacrifice children to get what they want, an unarmed populace whom they can control easily. America’s founding fathers knew what that would do to this country and that is why they put the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. even if they do away with gun-free zones in public places these mass shootings will continue to happen, some people are evil… Read more »
Anyone watch the video when LE came upon the locked doors in the school while the shooter was still shooting the UNARMED victims?
They had to detour to find another way in or the 4 minutes could have been 2 and many more lives saved.
All I hear is we need to spend more moeny to fix this or ban guns. How about just recognizing the rights of the staff in these schools to arm themselves as they see fit to defend themselves and students? The victims are truly the “first responders”.
If you don’t think armed security works , just go to your nearest municipal airport. You will immediately notice, not only TSA checking everything, including your underwear, but heavily armed Airport Police officers, Police presence at all commercial airports was mandated by Congress in 1972 in response to the ongoing threat of hijacking’s. Too bad it took 9/11 to start arming pilots and sky marshals ABOARD the aircraft. But it has worked ever since then. Do we care more about plane passengers then our school children ? Do the Liberals want to disarm the Airport Police , Security and pilots… Read more »
There is no debate possible, because it is ridiculous to debate about the best way to protect schools, when the goal is to use high body count school shootings as the leverage to DISARM THE CITIZENRY. One side wants safe schools. The other wants to leverage public outrage over mass murder, to overcome second Amendment restraint and get away with Australian type citizen disarmament. We KNOW at this point that GUN FREE ZONES disarm all who would protect, and will never, ever, stop even one mass murderer. GUN FREE ZONES are the BEST STRATEGY TO INSURE HIGH BODY COUNTS, and… Read more »
Can anyone name a single ‘mass shooting’ (NO not the murderer) event where the murderer was NOT either on mind altering drugs – prescribed or otherwise, going thru ‘counseling’ or both? I’ll even let ya cite gang related shootings if ya want to count them.
NOTE – there is a legitimate role for counseling in some cases, but very limited ones.
There was a 10 year ban imposed in 1994, and it didn’t make any difference.
The only reason they are wanting to ban them again is because the NWO is afraid of the resistance we would be able to mount with the AR. As long as we are armed they are afraid, and well they should be.
One problem is this country has gone from a nation of patriots, and leaders to a nation of sheep!
IF NOT NOW, WHEN?