Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was brutally murdered in the Parkland school massacre, put this election in the proper perspective as one between Joe Biden, who would put the safety of our kids and our country at risk for the sake of ideology, and Donald Trump, who would protect both.

Pollack rightly condemned liberal Democratic policies in general for putting the students at Parkland and elsewhere in danger by pursuing social justice and social engineering policies that protect those who would do us harm and not allow us to protect ourselves. It is the same mindset of those who today let felons go free for fear of COVID as our streets fill with burning and looted businesses and our inner cities are littered with bullet-ridden bodies, including infants shot in their car seats and toddlers at grandma’s house, all while defunding police, confiscating our guns, and removing school safety officers. As the New York Post reported that Pollack noted at the opening night of the Republican National Convention:

In a gripping speech in support of Donald Trump, the father of Parkland shooting victim Meadow Pollock accused Barack Obama and Joe Biden of “forcing” flawed restorative justice policies into schools, leading to his teen daughter’s 2018 murder.

Speaking at the 2020 Republican National Convention kickoff on Monday evening, Andrew Pollock zeroed in on what he said were “far left Democrats” in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School district in Parkland, Fla., and praised President Trump for taking action…

“The gunman had threatened to kill his classmates before; he had threatened to rape them; he had threatened to shoot up the school,” Pollack said. “Every red flag you can imagine. But the school didn’t just miss these red flags -- they knowingly ignored them.

“Far-left Democrats in our school district made this shooting possible because they implemented something they called ‘restorative justice,’” he continued.

Gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, slaughtered 14 students and three staffers in the school on Feb. 14, 2018.

“I was just fine with the old approach to discipline and safety -- it was called discipline and safety. But the Obama-Biden administration took Parkland’s bad policies and forced them into schools across America…”

Pollack noted that Biden will pursue full implementation of “restorative justice,” whatever that means, at the expense of our safety and that of our children. Indeed, Parkland’s blood is on Joe Biden’s hands. Pollack noted that Biden couldn’t remember Parkland, except to falsely claim that survivors of the Parkland school shooting visited him in the White House while he was vice-president. As Breitbart reported:

Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) made another gaffe Saturday, telling reporters in Iowa that Parkland students visited him -- while he was vice president -- in the aftermath of the school shooting, even though the incident occurred in 2018– over a year after he left office.

Biden… told a group of reporters in Iowa that students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School visited him while he was vice president, even though the shooting -- which resulted in 17 fatalities and over a dozen injuries -- happened on February 14, 2018, over a year after he left the White House.

As bad as the gaffe was, worse yet is the fact that legislation Joe Biden supported made a massacre such as what happened at Parkland possible.

Biden also may not recall sponsoring the legislation that made Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School a gun-free zone and Meadow Pollock and her fellow students sitting ducks for an armed predator.

What’s stopping teachers from bringing guns to work right now? The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. Sponsored by then-Sen. Joe Biden and signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush the law makes it illegal for anyone “to knowingly possess a firearm” within 1,000 feet of a school zone…

Could the Supreme Court overturn the Gun-Free School Zones Act? Maybe. They did it before. Five years after passage, the court declared the law unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. But Congress amended the bill and President Bill Clinton signed it back into law in 1996. The Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue ever since.

Perhaps they should. President Trump as a candidate opposed the idea of schools being gun-free zones:

Donald Trump likes the idea of teachers bearing arms in the K-12 classroom. “I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools -- you have to,” the Republican nominee told a crowd at a campaign rally in Burlington, Vt., in 2016. “My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There’s no more gun-free zones.”

Biden should learn what the Israelis already know, that the only way to protect our schoolchildren from a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Instead, we irrationally put the onus on guns like the AR15 which, contrary to media and political hype, is not an assault weapon.

The fact is that there is a sharp spike in school shootings since Joe Biden sponsored the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990:

Prior to Gun Free Zone Act

•During the 1950s there were 17 (1950, 51 (4), 52 (2), 53, 54 (2), 55, 56 (2), 57, 58 (2), 59).

•During the 1960s there were 18 (1960 (3 shootings), 61 (2), 66 (4), 67, 68 (4), 69 (4)).

•During the 1970s there were 30 (1970 (5 shootings), 71 (2), 73 (2), 74 (4), 75 (3), 76 (3), 77, 78 (7), 79 (3)).

•During the 1980s there were 39 (1980 (4 shootings), 81 (3), 82 (3), 83, 84 (4), 85 (5), 86 (5), 87 (5), 88 (6), 89 (3)).

After the Gun Free Zone Act

•During the 1990s there were 63 (1990 (2 shootings), 91 (6), 92 (7), 93 (10), 94 (10), 95 (4), 96 (7), 97 (6), 98 (7), 99 (6)).

•During the 1st decade there were 60 (2000 (5 shootings), 01 (5), 02 (7), 03 (4), 05 (5), 06 (11), 07 (5), 08 (11), 09 (7))

•During the 2010s (as of 14 February 2018) the total number is 146 shootings (2010 (11 shootings), 11 (7), 12 (11), 13 (26), 14 (36), 15 (21), 16 (15), 17 (9), 18 (10)).

School shootings are preventable. As much as Americans are reluctant to turn their schools into what critics call "armed camps," it would be a better situation than the free-fire zones that exist today. Would allowing guns in school be dangerous? We allow guns in schools right now by not having secure entrances, by not heeding warnings from those who did see something and did say something, or by not having adequate armed security on campus, including armed teachers. When citizens with guns were nearby, school shootings have been cut short:

Few Americans are aware that in an October 1997 shooting spree at a Pearl, Miss., high school that left two students dead, assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieved a gun from his car and immobilized the shooter until police arrived, preventing further killings.

Or, in another school shooting in January 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia, a disgruntled former student killed Law Dean L. Anthony Sutin, associate professor Thomas Blackwell and a student. Two of the three Virginia law students who overpowered the gunman were armed, preventing further deaths.

Not only would armed security in the schools do more than kumbaya-singing wishful thinking, the mere uncertainty of whether the shooter would face return fire might deter such crimes. Killers love gun-free zones, which is why the shooter at an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre picked a particular one.

Biden loves gun-free zones, particularly schools, as Andrew Pollack bitterly remembers.

It is Joe Biden who is in a major way responsible for making or schools free fire zones for armed predators. It is Joe Biden who has Parkland’s blood on his hands.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.               

Image: Public Domain