After the Sentinel weighed in on gun control in an editorial entitled “Until there are real limits on guns, school shootings will continue,” we get a take basically identical to the standard gun-grabber spiel: Guns are bad; ‘gun violence’ is the only violence that counts; ‘thoughts and prayers’ are meaningless, etc.
The sub-headline is the real attention-getter: “The country has for years been awash in political leaders who gaslight the nation by insisting that it’s not the guns.”
To ensure it’s not forgotten, the unnamed author of the editorial repeats the gaslighting comment later in the piece and adds: “Only liars and fools hold onto that trembling thread of nonsense.”
When gun homicides account for just 25% of all violent deaths, it’s not the guns. When the majority of death rates for one group are suicides, while the majority of deaths in another group are homicides, it’s not the guns – no matter how desperately gun-grabbers might wish it was.
The Sentinel editors, filled with self-righteousness, parrot just about every gun control trope and meme to excoriate politicians who “tout their five-star rating from the National Rifle Association for working to undermine gun-control laws that might have spared two injured students and the life of the student gunman, and lives lost every day to guns all over the nation.”
The Sentinel is in Colorado, a state where legislators have not only passed increasingly onerous state restrictions in every session since 2013, they repealed the state’s preemption law, allowing every wide spot in the road to enact its own gun control regime.
Have these laws spared any lives? Nope.
According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the state’s gun murder rate doubled from 2013 to 2024. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data shows a 47% jump in firearm suicides. The city of Aurora saw a 146% increase in gun murders between 2013 and 2024.
Among actual children (<1 to 17), Colorado’s gun violence death rate climbed 113% from 2013 to 2023, above the national average.
The editorial continues: “Mattering least of all are the meaningless, hollow and cruel offerings of ‘thoughts and prayers’.”
So compassion for those hurting after a tragedy is not as important as callously standing on the bodies of the slain, demanding laws which would not have saved them?
Interesting value system: Not very admirable, but hardly surprising.
After all, gun control isn’t about saving lives or increasing public safety: It’s about taking guns from those who lawfully own them whenever possible and making legal ownership difficult or impossible for everyone else.
That’s really all the gun grabbers know how to do: They’re a bit fuzzy about the whole “criminal” thing and profess a strange belief it’s possible to prevent something like a mass shooting with gun-free zones and assault weapon bans that don’t actually impact the millions of rifles already in circulation.
And then there’s the Sentinel’s editorial board, arrogantly (or ignorantly) demanding laws already on the books; forcing guilt onto those who have done no harm; and creating monsters out of hype, hysteria, and thin air.
In other words, gaslighting.
About Bill Cawthon
Bill Cawthon first became a gun owner 55 years ago. He has been an active advocate for Americans’ civil liberties for more than a decade. He is the information director for the Second Amendment Society of Texas.
