Charles C.W. Cooke Pulls an Obama on Gun Violence

In NRO's Charles C.W. Cooke's critique of the push to lower the voting age to 16 following the emergence of young gun control activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I was struck by his concluding paragraph:

There is always a risk of over-attending to spectacular attacks, and we are beginning to do that here. By the time the clock strikes midnight, an average of 21 Americans will have been killed by drivers aged between 16 and 20. Tomorrow, on average, eleven teenagers will die because they were texting while driving. This year, around 70 people will be killed by lawnmowers. These incidents will not prompt calls for profound constitutional change on the front of the New York Times, and nor should they. Some perspective is called for.

The moment I read Cooke's passage about the 70 people to be killed by lawnmowers, I immediately thought of President Obama's admonition to his staff that more people in this country are killed in bathtubs than by terrorists. 

Some perspective is indeed in order. President Obama invoked bathtubs in an effort to minimize terrorism, specifically the Islamic ideology behind those attacks. By the same token, Cooke is invoking lawnmowers to minimize mass shootings.

This isn't to say that the student body of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are right about gun control. But let us never ever forget that these students saw their fellow classmates and teachers die right in front of them. Theirs is a generation that has grown up with the prospect of school shootings and now that it has come to pass they don't want to go through it ever again. How are they any different from those who survived the attacks of September 11, 2001, Fort Hood, Boston, San Bernardino or Orlando? To say that more people in this country will be killed by lawnmowers than in mass shootings is every bit as disrespectful towards the student body of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as Obama's bathtub remark to those in this country who've seen Islamic terrorism up close and personal. Charles C.W. Cooke is right to point out the shortcomings of gun control. But surely he can do better than to erect an Obama style straw man.