© 2018 Phil Mislinski/Getty
Copyright © 2018
by Ralph F. Couey
Written content only
"We become slaves the moment we hand the keys
to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else."
--B. W. Powe
"Towards a Canada of Light"
We are seeing here in 2018 an unprecedented surge in school shootings. As of May 25th, there have been 23 shooting incidents. This is week 21 of 2018, thus they are happening at a rate of more than one per week. Forty-four people have been killed and sixty-six wounded, a total of 110 casualties. To call this a tragedy is a vast understatement. The threats to children from abuse, drugs, terroristic bullying and other less easily definable causes are bad enough. To take away what once was the sanctuary of the schoolhouse makes their lives harder by an order of magnitude. The reaction of the public, fueled by activist media and agenda-driven politicians and pundits, has been one of shock, horror, and despair. The political left has unleashed a wave of anti-gun activism. By all accounts, the National Rifle Association and its political allies are under siege to an unprecedented degree.
But in the space of time in the city of Chicago, 1,012 people have been shot, including nearly 40 victims over the three days of the Memorial Day holiday. That is 50 shootings per week, or more than seven per day. If you go back to the beginning of 2016, the number of shooting victims is now over 8,000. That is, on average, 64 victims per week; over nine per day. According to Chicago PD stats, over two-thirds of those incidents have been cases of African Americans shooting other African Americans. Gun laws have proven ineffective because many of those shooters are already legally banned from owning or possessing weapons. Yet, they still are able to arm themselves.
The media and public response? Dead, cold silence.
Where are the activists? Where is the gun control lobby? Where is the national outrage?
Why don't those Black Lives Matter?
A climate of hate has been created by the adults in this country. Anger is expressed, sometimes irrationally towards political figures, people of other races or nationalities, or just those who don't agree with a certain viewpoint. The thing we must remember is that while we have been spewing this anger and hate on television, on radio, in the newspapers, and in our own homes, our children have been listening.
We have taught them how to hate. We have taught them how to be angry. We have allowed them to view movies, television, and video games where the only resolution to any problem is violence. And our children have been watching.
How can we expect them to learn tolerance when the only thing they hear from us is utter intolerance?
People who hate will find a way to do violence. Take away the guns, there's always rocks and sticks. Take away those and tie them into chairs, and they will still hurl vile words at each other. The hate fuels the violence. Part of the solution is clear: End the hate, end the violence.
The most egregious part of this tragedy is how political activists have been using these incidents for fodder. They are fundraising over the graves of dead children, and nobody seems to mind.
As with anything else in 21st century America, the stench of partisan politics has clouded the facts, and has prevented any real rational solutions from even being considered.
The NRA still refuses to take a stand on those technologies that turn single-shot weapons into tools of mass-murder. Bump stocks, large-capacity magazines, an institutional resistance to background checks, and one can still find online kits to convert a single-shot weapon to fully automatic. NRA members say that any attempt to regulate guns is the beginning of legislative creep that will lead to the eventual repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Their blind allegiance to that cause leads them into positions that defy rational thought, even a sense of public responsibility. That none of the many mass shooters have ever been proven to be NRA members doesn't seem to matter.
The right is not alone in this. As the situation in Chicago has demonstrated, the left selectively applies their activism. They virtually ignore incidents where mass shootings have been stopped or prevented through the use of guns by private citizens or law enforcement. They are loathe to criticize incidents or situations where their party comes under scrutiny. Chicago has been solidly Democrat for more than two centuries. The current mayor is a former Clinton Administration official. And yet he has been given a free pass on the violence in his city. In the city of Denver, one can walk by homes bearing yard signs, one which says "Hate has no home here," alongside another that states "End Trump." It can only be assumed that hate is okay with these people as long as it is directed at Republicans.
The shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in Florida could have been prevented. In the months prior to that terrible day, Nikolas Cruz's violent tendencies had been brought to the attention of school officials, local law enforcement, and the FBI some 44 different times. This egregious failure to act proactively was, in this writer's opinion, politically motivated.
The school officials who could have acted are Democrats. The Broward County Sheriff is a Democrat. In both cases those parties escaped any blame or responsibility. The FBI failed to act, and they were not criticized because Democrats were unwilling to upset the still-empty evidentiary applecart of the investigation into alleged collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. Democrats have shown that the only time their activism shows is when something can be blamed on the other side. This puts them into the irrational situation of decrying mass shootings in schools while ignoring the slaughter of people in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York, and other major cities.
Adding to the problem of prevention is that if someone is suffering from a mental disease or defect and has not been referred for evaluation and treatment, whose obvious problems have been ignored by those around them, then there is no legal way to prevent them from obtaining a gun and ammunition. Nikolas Cruz is an easy and obvious example. That few of his classmates were surprised or shocked when his identity was released speaks volumes about the willful blindness of school and law enforcement officials who had plenty of warning.
Violence is a tool of hate. Unless we stop the hate, the violence will continue to increase. If we continue to demonstrate to our children that selective hate is acceptable; that the only way to resolve disputes is through violence, and that the extent of someone's culpability is limited by their political affiliation, that support of a constitutional amendment overrides public safety, then we sow the seeds of their distorted view of life. As long as we blindly accept what the leaders of our political movements tell us is absolute truth, we feed the lies, and propagate the hate. And if politicians and pundits are not held accountable for the truth by their own constituencies (read: us), then they will lie, and will do so with enthusiasm and without conscience.
If we truly want to end the violence, then it cannot start with activism; it cannot start with legislation; it cannot be left to politicians. It must...repeat must...begin with us; you and me.
Let us act together, not as political lemmings, but as We the People, independent of activists, acting on our own sense of unity and a mutual desire to bring peace to this torn and tattered landscape.
Let us all work together to return schools to the sanctuary of peace and safety they were always meant to be.
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