The Columbine school shooting is considered by many as one of the most shocking events in modern American history. And it certainly changed the conversation around gun rights and the Second Amendment. But years later, as some politicians continue to condemn the right to bear arms following mass shootings, Columbine survivor Evan Todd is ready for America to adopt some real solutions — and it’s not gun control.
“Early on, when [Columbine] was more fresh, I just thought that people genuinely thought that [gun control] was going to help protect schools or stop these kinds of mass shootings. But it’s been 25 years and the fact that politicians keep beating this drum…you see how politically divided [the topic is] and [how] ideology has driven the motive,” Mr. Todd recently told The Washington Times.
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“More laws are not going to stop a mass shooter,” he continued, noting that Colorado had around 30 gun laws on the books at the time of the Columbine shooting. “When they’re intent on murdering other individuals they don’t care about the law. The law doesn’t matter whether it’s a gun law or any other law. They will break them.”
The gun rights advocate, who was a sophomore in 1999 when two student gunmen infamously killed 13 people at Columbine High School and injured numerous others (himself included), said that it’s “maddening” when people go right to the gun control debate following school shootings. Gun laws don’t solve the problem of mass shootings, they just disarm people who are simply trying to protect themselves, their families and their communities. Instead, Mr. Todd believes if we really want to protect schools and stop these mass shootings, it’s going to require having an armed presence on every campus.
“Gun control is not a solution… The solution is to physically stop them,” he explained. “[Mass shootings] are stopped when someone confronts the shooter and the vast majority of time that’s an armed person.”
“There should be an armed presence at every single school on every single campus, every single minute of every single day that our children are in school. And that’s something that parents need to demand from their local school districts,” he added. “If you’re not asking and demanding it, it’s not happening. And then the worst thing happens and you say oh I didn’t think it could happen here. And that’s not a position you want to be in.”
But it’s not just the safety of schools and children at stake. Human history has shown us what can happen when a government denies its citizens the right to bear arms. In fact, Mr. Todd believes the only thing stopping America from a potentially oppressive government is the Second Amendment.
“The worst atrocities don’t come from mass shooters as awful as these situations are. When dozens are killed it’s horrific, but governments can murder people by the hundreds, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, the millions, and so one of the miracles of America is the fact that we have the Second Amendment,” he explained.
“The second Amendment is the lynchpin of freedom. If we do not hold onto that then tyrannical politicians will be able to impose any kind of mandate, laws or otherwise. So that’s why the American people need to tell politicians this is a nonstarter. This is non-negotiable. These are our rights as American citizens and we will uphold them.”
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Marissa Mayer is a writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her work has been featured in Christian Post, The Daily Signal, and Intellectual Takeout. Mayer has a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from Arizona State University.
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