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The Gun Debate is Over
(If You Didn’t Realize It, Guns Won)
Darius Watson
On May 18 of last year there was a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. In 25 minutes 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis killed 10 people and wounded 13 more using a revolver and a 12-gauge pump shotgun. The story itself was quickly eclipsed by the upcoming Royal wedding and rumors of a caravan of criminally-minded illegal immigrants approaching the southern border. It was the second deadliest school shooting in US history, and it was just a blip on the screen of America’s media cycle. In fact, if you go back and review the news cycle for that week you will quickly notice that the story itself was prominent for less than 48 hours. The overall perception was that all the issues and concerns the shooting potentially raised had just been covered by the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting three months earlier.
It wasn’t just media exhaustion or the country choosing to look away from yet another school shooting. The death and mayhem in Santa Fe Texas last May marked a watershed event in the national gun debate. Comparing the national response to the tragedy with the procession of mass school shootings that had preceded it I…
