The Justice Department just put out a report that is highly critical of the response to the Uvalde school shooting. Instead of examining the reality of providing juicy targets in the form of unarmed victim zones in our schools, the Left is calling for a ban on certain firearms that have cosmetic characteristics they find unsettling:

The most disingenuous part of the Left’s position is that they’ll stop once they’ve banned “assault weapons.” Let’s assume we could simply wave a magic wand and all semi-automatic rifles in civilian hands would just disappear. The civilian population would still have millions of pistols, revolvers, shotguns, and rifles available.

People with sick and evil minds who want to shoot up a school will still exist. There are lots of firearms that exist that would be far more devastating than an AR-15. A 30 round magazine allows a shooter to put up a certain volume of fire between reloads, but frankly, reloads can be pretty fast with a bit of training. If you’re the only armed person in a school, the 2 seconds for a reload are inconsequential.

Anyone with a modicum of firearms knowledge understands the difference between a standard rifle cartridge such as .30-06 Springfield and the puny 5.56.

A 10 round magazine with a two second reload is not very different than a thirty round magazine. It’s just an extra four seconds of reload to get 30 rounds out. But those 180 grain .30-06 bullets are considerably more powerful than the 5.56 62 grain rounds. I’ve dropped a 600 lb black bear in its tracks with a .30-06. I’ve knocked huge hogs off their feet with it. It’s a great round for elk, moose, and even grizzly defense. The 5.56 is a poodle shooter.

The gun grabbers’ logic with Uvalde is that of course law enforcement feared to engage the shooter, because he was armed with the AR-15 super weapon. Even though the police had body armor, they failed to immediately engage. Frankly, they’d have been even more afraid if the shooter had been using a World War II rifle instead of the 1960s vintage AR-15. Instead of the M1, the shooter could have selected the deer rifle my father hunted with back in the 1970s: The Remington 742 Woodsmaster.

Obviously, the gun grabbers’ logic will tell us that the problem is ALL semi-automatic rifles. They all must be banned! No detachable magazines! After that, no magazines with more than a three round capacity! If you need more than three rounds to kill a dee-yah, you’re a terrible hunter.

Let’s reduce this Leftist logic to the ultimate Fudd weapon — the double barreled break action shotgun. Even Joe Biden tells us all we need for home defense is a shotgun.

I’m sure at this point the critics are saying “But you can’t reload that double barreled shotgun very fast.” With a bit of practice, you can become quite proficient.

In that video, the shooter fires four rounds of 00-buckshot in 5.5 seconds. That’s eighteen .33 caliber pellets at 1,100 fps at the rate of 6.5 per second.

Five and a half seconds to fire 4 rounds of 00-Buck, nine .33 caliber pellets each. 6.5 per second is faster than an AR-15. That’s the equivalent of a .15 split, even with the reload time. Someone running an AR-15 that fast is going to lose accuracy, while the shotgun is easier to handle.

Would the Uvalde cops be afraid to confront someone with a 12 gauge? They should be, since their body armor would have provided less protection due to the spread of the pellets.

The solution to school shootings is not to ban certain weapons, since even the lowliest of “Fudd guns” would be extremely deadly in a school filled with unarmed victims. Even a man with a knife can kill a lot of people when no one else is armed. A quarter of mass murders are done without guns. But there has never been a mass shooting in the hundreds of schools that allow teachers to carry guns.

Unfortunately, Montana by default does not allow teachers to carry guns in school. MCA 45-8-361 requires advanced permission from the trustees of a school district in order to carry. This no doubt deters many teachers and school staff members. This should be reversed by the legislature. Make the trustees produce a policy stating that children will be held defenseless, if they don’t want to allow teachers and staff to carry. As a compromise, perhaps we could have a “school carry” permit that would require a shooting test to show competence.

I’d like to think that our Montana law enforcement personnel are more courageous than their Uvalde counterparts, but the best policy would be to make our schools much safer by allowing the armed defense of children.

And if you’re a Fudd who thinks the left will stop when they’ve banned those other people’s guns, you’re kidding yourself. They’ll be coming for your fowling pieces soon enough. This isn’t about protecting children. They need us disarmed to do what they want to do.