Western Kentucky county rocked by school shooting remains skeptical of gun control measures - Entrepreneur Generations

A deadly school shooting rocked Marshall County High School in western Kentucky this January, but gun control is proving a hard sell for locals in the rural community of Benton, Dylan Lovan reports for The Associated Press.

Jeff Dysinger's 15-year-old daughter Hannah was shot in the arm and chest, but he doesn't agree with calls to curb so-called assault weapons. Dysinger, a former soldier who uses his AR-15 for sport shooting and hunting, told Lovan "I think everybody in rural Kentucky, we're all brought up with guns, I mean we've all been around guns our entire life . . . Kids in cities like (Parkland, Florida) don't get that." Hannah Dysinger says she supports more comprehensive background checks and, like her dad, wants to make sure the wrong people don't get their hands on guns.

The Dysingers' nuanced stance on guns bears out evidence of the difference between urban and rural views on guns. "A Pew Research poll from April 2017 showed 63 percent of Americans in rural areas said it's more important to support gun rights than gun control, compared to only 37 percent in urban areas," Lovan reports. "The poll surveyed 3,930 people from April-18, 2017, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points."

After the shooting, the conversation in Marshall tended to focus not on gun control, but on improving security and increasing the presence of armed personnel in schools. Marshall County School Superintendent Trent Lovett said his students' familiarity with guns may have helped save lives: when shooter Gabriel Parker was changing magazines on his Ruger, some students saw the moment for what it was and were able to direct students to run.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2HoRcCf Western Kentucky county rocked by school shooting remains skeptical of gun control measures - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet