By: Robert Davis
After seeing a 2020 campaign video arguing that gun control policies should be a school safety precaution, Andrew Pollack said he felt ill.
Pollack doesn’t remember his daughter Meadow as one of the Parkland shooting victims like the mainstream media does. Instead, he honors her memory by studying how Democratic policies fueled the underlying causes of the shooting and travels the country teaching parents about his research.
"I wanted to look into it, I wanted to honor my daughter to see what happened, and how it could happen that I put my daughter in a school, in a nice neighborhood, and then I’m never going to see her again," Pollack told Tomi Lahren on her Fox Nation show. "I wanted to know the facts. I didn’t just listen to mainstream media, I didn’t jump on that bandwagon — and I found out that there was a multitude of failures and policies that lead up to my daughter getting murdered, that the mainstream media didn’t want to cover."
Pollack said his research opened his eyes to the insidious nature of gun control.
"My daughter paid the ultimate sacrifice because of those Democratic policies and I’ve been hurt by the Democrats more than anybody in this country — and I hold them responsible," Pollack said.
He details his objections to disarming people in school zones and universal background checks in his book, How Meadow Died: The People and Policies that Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger American Students.
“(The book is) like a manual or a guide for parents and grandparents to read it and actually look at what happened in Parkland and compare it — these policies are throughout the whole country,” Pollack told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto in an earlier interview.
Background Checks
A common theme in the Left’s gun control policies is that America needs a more thorough background check system to keep firearms away from criminals. Research, of course, has shown this tactic to be ineffective.
Federal law currently prohibits gun ownership for people who were adjudicated as mentally ill, incarcerated for more than a year, fugitives from justice, or those who were dishonorably discharged from the military. Even so, hordes of people who fall into one or more of these categories obtain firearms every year.
Instead of banning guns, politicians should spend more time investigating the underlying issues, Pollack says.
"Gun control does not address mental health…or arresting these people when they make threats…those are the real issues," he said.
Criminals Don’t Care
The other failure of gun control is that it assumes criminals are more likely to follow tougher laws.
News flash: criminals don’t follow any laws.
"Democrats put these policies in place that don’t believe in holding kids accountable or arresting them while they’re juveniles…so if they don’t arrest them and they don’t get a background (check), then they’re able to purchase weapons legally and a background check is useless," Pollack said.
The Miami Herald reported that classmates of Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people in the Parkland shooting, had seen a social media post from him saying that he wants to “shoot up” a school. Some of the students reported his behavior to school counselors, all of whom failed to act on the information.
According to police reports, Cruz had a history of domestic violence as well. He hit his mother on several occasions.
Pollack argues that the fact this much information was in the public but not shared with the proper authorities is further proof of the ineffectiveness of our current background check system. Increasing the size of this system would only make matters worse if authorities are unwilling to act.
"To me, gun control would’ve been if they arrested (Cruz) for punching his mother’s teeth out and he got a background (check),” Pollack said.
Robert Davis is a general assignment reporter for Gunpowder Magazine. Contact him with tips or comments at RobertDavis0414 (at) gmail dot com.