This was posted on the Facebook Not the Best of the Web Today page:

This Fox News graphic …

… dovetails with what Robby Soave reports:

“Guns are for the police and the government,” a 13-year-old girl confidently assured me.

She was one of the hundreds of thousands of people taking part in the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. She was flanked by two friends—another 13-year-old, and an 11-year-old—who were equally confident that violence in schools was the problem, and banning guns was the answer.

“Our school could be next,” said the other 13-year-old. “What if it is?”

It wasn’t just these three—from what I saw and heard at the rally, dying in school was a remarkably ubiquitous fear among young people. I spotted a little girl, perched on her father’s shoulders, waving a sign bearing the text “Am I Next?”

Marissa, a teenage girl from Michigan, told me she felt unsafe in school, and thought more security would help. Teenager after teenager testified that their fears of death were all-consuming, ever-present, and more justified than ever before.

Missing from these conversations was any awareness of a very basic, indisputable fact: Gun violence has declined precipitously over the past 25 years, and most Americans are much safer today than they were a generation ago.

Schools are no exception. They are “increasingly free of mass shootings,” according to researchers James Alan Fox and Emma Fridel. As New York Magazine‘s Eric Levitz put it:

American children do not “risk their lives” when they show up to school each morning — or at least, not nearly as much as they do whenever they ride in a car, swim in a pool, or put food in their mouths (an American’s lifetime odds of dying in a mass shooting committed in any location is 1 in 11,125; of dying in a car accident is 1 and 491; of drowning is 1 in 1,133; and of choking on food is 1 in 3,461). Criminal victimization in American schools has collapsed in tandem with the overall crime rate, leaving U.S. classrooms safer today than at any time in recent memory.

Obviously, it’s understandable for the survivors of the horrific events in Parkland to be feeling unsafe, given what happened to them. But mass shootings are not the norm, and kids don’t need to be terrified of going to school.

In any case, most young people I talked to on Saturday possessed both an overriding fear of being in school and a willingness to experiment with enhanced security.

“I don’t feel safe in school,” a teenager from a high school in Maryland told me. “I think there should be more security measures put in place, and the ones that are being put in place are ineffective.”

The least popular solution was arming teachers. That was something virtually everybody at the rally seemed to oppose, kids and adults.

When I asked people whether they wanted more school resource officers—a security measure that utterly failed to stop the Parkland shooting, and creates plenty of negative externalities relating to school discipline and zero tolerance—opinions were mixed, though some reluctantly supported it.

“I think there should [be more cops in schools] but I don’t think that would be as helpful as just taking guns from those who shouldn’t have them,” said the Maryland teen. “Certain guns, like AR-15s, shouldn’t even be accessible to the public.”

Well, a majority of Americans once favored slavery and opposed voting rights for women and non-whites. The 18th Amendment creating Prohibition was approved through the constitutional process, as was the 21st Amendment nullifying the 18th Amendment.

Decades ago opponents of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy circulated a copy of the Bill of Rights and asked people whether they favored or opposed specific provisions. The results were disappointing. You might get similarly disappointing results today.

Stephen Halbrook:

The perennial gun-control debate in America did not begin here. The same arguments for and against were made in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.

In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.#ad#

In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not “politically reliable.”

During the five years of repression that followed, society was “cleansed” by the National Socialist regime. Undesirables were placed in camps where labor made them “free,” and normal rights of citizenship were taken from Jews. The Gestapo banned independent gun clubs and arrested their leaders. Gestapo counsel Werner Best issued a directive to the police forbidding issuance of firearm permits to Jews.

In 1938, Hitler signed a new Gun Control Act. Now that many “enemies of the state” had been removed from society, some restrictions could be slightly liberalized, especially for Nazi Party members. But Jews were prohibited from working in the firearms industry, and .22 caliber hollow-point ammunition was banned.

The time had come to launch a decisive blow to the Jewish community, to render it defenseless so that its “ill-gotten” property could be redistributed as an entitlement to the German “Volk.” The German Jews were ordered to surrender all their weapons, and the police had the records on all who had registered them. Even those who gave up their weapons voluntarily were turned over to the Gestapo.

This took place in the weeks before what became known as the Night of the Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, occurred in November 1938. That the Jews were disarmed before it, minimizing any risk of resistance, is the strongest evidence that the pogrom was planned in advance. An incident was needed to justify unleashing the attack.

That incident would be the shooting of a German diplomat in Paris by a teenage Polish Jew. Hitler directed propaganda minister Josef Goebbels to orchestrate the Night of the Broken Glass. This massive operation, allegedly conducted as a search for weapons, entailed the ransacking of homes and businesses, and the arson of synagogues.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler decreed that 20 years be served in a concentration camp by any Jew possessing a firearm. Rusty revolvers and bayonets from the Great War were confiscated from Jewish veterans who had served with distinction. Twenty thousand Jewish men were thrown into concentration camps, and had to pay ransoms to get released.

The U.S. media covered the above events. And when France fell to Nazi invasion in 1940, the New York Times reported that the French were deprived of rights such as free speech and firearm possession just as the Germans had been. Frenchmen who failed to surrender their firearms within 24 hours were subject to the death penalty.

No wonder that in 1941, just days before the Pearl Harbor attack, Congress reaffirmed Second Amendment rights and prohibited gun registration. In 1968, bills to register guns were debated, with opponents recalling the Nazi experience and supporters denying that the Nazis ever used registration records to confiscate guns. The bills were defeated, as every such proposal has been ever since, including recent “universal background check” bills.

As in Weimar Germany, some well-meaning people today advocate severe restrictions, including bans and registration, on gun ownership by law-abiding persons. Such proponents are in no sense “Nazis,” any more than were the Weimar officials who promoted similar restrictions. And it would be a travesty to compare today’s situation to the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Still, as history teaches, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In this country gun control was used against Southern blacks.

Jarrett Stepman went to the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., so we didn’t have to:

The following are my observations from walking through the crowd and assessing its common themes.

1) A Left-Wing Movement

It may seem painfully obvious, but it is worth noting the march in Washington was clearly a left-wing protest.

That obviously applies to Madison’s protest too. I shouldn’t even have to type that sentence.

As Julie Gunlock at The Federalist noted, some parents were led to believe that the March 14 National School Walkout would be about memorializing victims of the Parkland shooting. It wasn’t.

“The real mission of the walkout is to demand Congress pass more restrictive gun laws,” Gunlock wrote.

This goal was even more obvious at the March for Our Lives.

Gun control is certainly associated with the modern left, but it’s clear from observing the protesters that many were involved with other left-wing movements.

The pink hats from the 2017 Women’s March made a widespread reappearance, as did numerous anti-Trump or generally anti-Republican signs.

The crowd was certainly not a representative slice of what the country as a whole thinks about gun control, nor did it represent the opinions of most young Americans.

As The Daily Signal recently reported, polls show that millennials are no more in favor of gun control than their parents or grandparents.

2) Well-Organized and Well-Funded

This was certainly one of the largest gatherings I’ve seen in Washington, D.C., and one of the most highly organized.

Clearly, staff from a huge number of activist pro-gun control organizations showed up, as would be expected, but there were also people on almost every street corner trying to register people to vote.

People carried signs from gun control groups, such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

Undoubtedly, many people from around the country came to the protest out of a sincere belief that they were making a positive difference to end violence, but there’s also no doubt that a huge amount of professional organization and money went into this march.

A series of Hollywood celebrities funded the march, including Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, and others.

As BuzzFeed reported, a litany of leftist organizations and politicos got involved, including the George Soros-backed MoveOn.org, Women’s March LA, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and, curiously, Planned Parenthood.

There were certainly many children present, but there’s no way they could have put this all together on their own. Outside help and organization was apparent.

3) Prayer Is Out

The March for Our Lives protesters were seemingly not fans of prayer.

Many protesters specifically condemned the act of offering prayers in the wake of shootings, pitting it against political action. Political action is often important, but it was strange to see so many signs specifically aimed at condemning prayer.

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, liberal calls to action have centered on banning guns. But such calls have neglected other serious issues relating to school shootings that have nothing to do with firearms, including the way America deals with the mentally ill.

Another issue is how federal and local policies have let dangerous people, like the Parkland shooter, slip through the cracks. Often the problem is not with a lack of laws, but a failure to enforce the laws that already exist.

There are a number of serious proposals that would tackle the issue of school safety without confiscating guns or seriously curtailing constitutional rights. See, for instance, The Heritage Foundation’s School Safety Initiative.

But this doesn’t fit the narrative of those leading the March for Our Lives protest, who from the outset have been committed to gun control.

4) Those Who Disagree Viewed as Complicit in Murder

While the name March for Our Lives may be a coincidence, it certainly sounds similar to the March for Life, a pro-life rally that takes place each January in Washington, D.C.

Numerous signs claimed that those who back gun rights don’t care about the lives of children or are responsible for deaths.

Others specifically linked the pro-abortion and gun control movements.

And many condemned the National Rifle Association for having blood on its hands, or insinuated that the pro-gun organization has bought off politicians to support its policy interests.

One protester even compared the NRA to ISIS.

5) Second Amendment Seen as Problematic and Outdated

While gun control advocates have generally been cautious about outright attacking the Second Amendment, many of the protesters had no such reservations.

Some lamented that former President Barack Obama didn’t confiscate guns.

Several protesters questioned Supreme Court decisions upholding gun ownership as a constitutional right.

Many held signs saying essentially that the Second Amendment is irrelevant because the Founders wrote it in the 18th century.

But following that logic, one would have to question all the other provisions of the Constitution that were written by the Founding generation, including the First Amendment.

After all, the internet didn’t exist in the 18th century. Does this mean that free speech on the internet shouldn’t be protected?

And what about the constitutionally protected right to assembly, also guaranteed by the decidedly 18th-century First Amendment? These protesters seem to at least value that piece of constitutional inheritance.

6) Fuzzy Facts

It was clear that while many of the protesters were articulate in defending their views, they were misinformed about some of the facts surrounding the gun debate.

For instance, in an interview with The Daily Signal’s Genevieve Wood, one marcher repeated the thoroughly debunked claim that there had been 18 school shootings this year prior to Parkland.

This shocking number, repeated by Obama and some major media outlets, was a bogus stat cooked up by a pro-gun control group.

Almost none of the incidents used in that statistic can be described as anything like a school shooting—several were suicides or random shootings that simply took place near a school campus.

The Washington Post even called the statistic “flat wrong.”

There were other examples of misinformation as well, including one sign that called for a ban on “automatic weapons,” which have actually been banned since 1934.

Unfortunately, Americans have received a huge amount of disinformation about guns and gun control, much of it perpetuated by the media.

Read my piece about the six common media myths about gun control.

7) Not a Gun-Free Zone

The March for Our Lives crowd may have wanted to disarm Americans, but the event hardly took place in a gun-free zone.

Armed police covered the streets to ensure the safety of those gathering in the nation’s capital. In fact, there were even armored military vehicles embedded within groups of protesters.

Some signs essentially called for only the government to have firearms.

Of course, the idea that only the government and the military should have access to firearms would not have sat well with the Founders. They feared a government powerful enough to disarm the citizenry and a standing army. That’s why we have the Second Amendment.