By Paul Waldmiller
Did you know it has been just over two years since the Parkland School shooting incident? Last Friday, Governor Ron DeSantis ordered all flags of Government buildings including Florida schools to fly their flags at half-mast.
Although there are many voices and opinions about why in the past quarter century we have seen an influx of school shootings including at Parkland, the facts and numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics, 2013 report entitled, “Indicators of School and Safety”, the years 1992 -93 until the 2010-11 school year, there were between 11 and thirty-four homicides of youth ages 5 to 18 at U.S schools (including attacks other than with firearms) with an average of approximately 23 homicides per year. Comparing that to the National Center for Education enrolment statistics, that’s about 0.000044 percent of public and private Kindergarten through 12 students who were killed at school per year between 1992-93 and 2010-11.
Any number of children hurt or murdered at our schools is unacceptable, but there have been those who have used school shootings to propagate for a ban on guns and the Second Amendment as well. In fact, Florida’s “Red-Flag Laws” have been implemented directly as a result of the hysteria and propaganda of propagandists who hate both guns and the Second Amendment. The so-called “Red Flag Laws are entirely unconstitutional. Enforcement of these laws take place by any number of Florida law enforcement officials where they can confiscate a Florida resident’s guns and weapons up to one-year without any due process which is a guaranteed right under our United States Constitution.
Groups such as Michael Bloomberg’s (same Bloomberg running for President) Everytown for Gun Safety, falsely claim that there have been seventy-four school shootings since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. But those numbers are artificially inflated by including suicides, accidents and criminal activities such as drug deals or robberies that took place outside of school property or hours. Readers should also take notice that the Bloomberg sponsored numbers, occurred not only at grade schools but on college campuses as well.