Hey, wait a minute. Wasn’t that mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., supposed to be the Mother of All Wakeup Calls to end gun violence in America?
Weren’t we supposed to have been shaken to our core, energized in an unprecedented way to seek an end to this madness?
I thought so, too.
Silly me.
Check out the map here and ask yourself: Why has this violence continued?
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5797306/map-school-shooting-sandy-hook
Seventy-four.
That’s the number of school shootings that have occurred since Sandy Hook, where 20 first-graders and six teachers were killed by that single madman, who then shot himself to death.
The latest incident occurred near my hometown of Portland, Ore., where a 15-year-old Reynolds High School student walked into a locker room and killed a 14-year-old freshman instantly with a single bullet. The shooter then took his own life.
We’re outraged yet again. President Obama said after the Portland tragedy that “we’re the only industrialized nation” where this kind of violence occurs with such regularity.
I don’t have the answer. Nor do I know where to find it.
The Second Amendment says we have the right to keep and bear arms. I don’t believe it says everyone in America — regardless of their mental condition — has the same rights to a firearm as most of the rest of us.
There must be a way to prevent them from putting their hands on deadly weapons — and putting our children at such horrifying risk.
“Seventy-four.”
The number is totally cooked. An investigative reporter looked at the drones from Bloomberg’s numbers and they flat cooked that number totally misrepresenting many shootings. There are number of WordPress blogs that have already covered that.
“I don’t have the answer. Nor do I know where to find it.”
Look around you. Do we have armed people in banks to protect money? Do we have armed people in Brinks truck to protect money? Do we sometimes have armed people in up scale jewelry stores to protect diamonds (money)? Do politicians have people with guns to protect them (so they can continue getting paid money from our taxes)? Does President Obama have guys around him with sub-machine guns under their coats to protect him (so he can supervise taxiing our money)?
But kids? No, apparently they are not valuable enough to protect with guns in the hands of good people.
Now I am not saying guns will solve the problem. They won’t. We need to find the real problem and it is not guns – those are just the symptoms. But they might keep a lot of kids from getting killed while we try to figure out the real problem.
regards,
lwk
Thanks for your comments. No thanks, but I still prefer that we do not flood our schools with guns. If local govts want to assign more police officers who are trained extensively in the use of firearms to guard our children, fine. Teachers, custodians, cafeteria cooks? No thanks.
“If local govts want to assign more police officers who are trained extensively in the use of firearms to guard our children, fine.”
Chris Hernandez who has a blog on WordPress posted a reply a while back to a person who was concerned about teachers, etc – not being police – having firearms in school. Like you he was concerned that only police had sufficient training.
Chris is a police officer and he trained other officers for “active shooters” in schools so he is something of an authority. Here is a link if you care to check it out – I promise it is an interesting read.
Everything that’s wrong with the argument against protecting schools with guns
http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/09/03/everything-thats-wrong-with-the-argument-against-protecting-schools-with-guns/
regards,
lwk
I’ll take a look. Thanks again for your comments and thanks for reading the blog.