August 11, 2026

Guns and Social Network Reactions

I think it would be safe to say that very few of political watchers had gun regulation on the radar in the days before the Sandy Hook shootings. Since…well, it’s hard to talk about anything else (and not just because the fiscal cliff story is the least-interesting-and-most-difficult-to-understand-but-perhaps-most-important-story this year).

With that in mind, I asked a couple friends over at PoliticIt to take a look at what trends they saw in social media immediately before and immediately after the Newtown shooting. (PoliticIt, if you’ve not heard of it before, is the brainchild of Josh Light and Sterling Morris. They collect data from social networks, the internet, and “the real world” to create a measure of politicians digital influence that accurately predicts electoral success.)

They showed me some interesting things.

Larry Correia on gun regulation and arming teachers

The more I hear, the more I think we need not only need a conversation about guns and mental health, but we probably ought to learn more about what we are talking about before we go around maligning them. In the last couple days, I’ve heard people in the news attack “semi-automatic” weapons (newsflash: almost every single gun in the world is a semi-automatic weapon–it just means that after you fire a round, a new round is pushed into the cylinder so you can fire another round) and “assault” rifles, a term that didn’t really exist until the mid-1980s and which creation only served to popularize the Bushmaster.

If you read nothing else, you should set aside a few minutes and read author Larry Correia’s (see a review of his first book, a best seller, here) two-bits. A former gun store owner and a Utah Concealed and Carry Weapon permit trainer, he provides some interesting insights to the debate

Is it about the guns? [KSL]

Before we jump to conclusions, pass laws with long-reaching consequences, let’s take time to take a closer look at those who are behind the guns. They are, in many respects, those who need our help the most, and by the time they have taken up deadly weapons, we have as a society missed their need for help. Restricting gun ownership is an easy, if misguided answer. Addressing how we help the mentally ill and those on society’s fringes will require more of us, but ultimately will save more lives.