Another week, another school shooting. Will this ever end?
Some high school kid went to school this week, armed with his father’s shotgun and .38 revolver, and fatally shot to death ten innocents and wounded another dozen. Why? Because he could, I guess. Who knows.
Being a school student is a very hazardous profession. More school kids were gunned down by classmates in the past year than cops were killed by bad guys. What is wrong with this picture?
Apologists for the American gun culture were quick to offer up silly excuses and bogeymen, trying to manage the societal outrage.
The NRA’s new President, the disgraced ex-Colonel Oliver North of Iran-Contra infamy, blamed the problem on kids hopped up with Ritalin. Not to quibble, but there is no evidence that Ritalin (or any other drug) has been instrumental in this culture of violence.
Availability of guns…now, that’s a different matter.
Americans own almost half (48 percent) of the 650 million civilian-owned guns worldwide. Think about that…
The Lt. Governor of Texas blamed the rash of school shootings on, of all things, abortion. It devalues life, according to the nincompoop. What do you expect from Texas?
The NRA’s proposed solution to these incidents is two-fold: (1) bolster the security at schools, i.e. harden the site; and, (2) arm the teachers. Both of these solutions involve more armament, which would be a boon to the arms industry, the chief financial booster of…the NRA. (Gee, isn’t that a coincidence!)
As one critic has pointed out, if more guns equaled fewer mass murders, then the United States would be the safest country in the world. This is because we have far more guns per capita than any country.
Some Second Amendment folks, trying to deflect attention to themselves, point to the violent video games played by today’s youth. However, those kind of video games are played by kids all over the world, and no other country has the magnitude of problem with school shootings that we do.
The difference is the availability of guns to kids in our country. It may be easier for a young kid to obtain a gun than a joint of marijuana. My, how times have changed! If I had school-aged children right now, I might seriously consider home-schooling them…just to keep them out of harm’s way.
“Make America Great Again”… I would like this slogan to include helping to make this Nation like it was when I was a kid, when it was safe to go to school. Back in my youth, kids didn’t have access to killing weapons, and their parents didn’t have a deadly armory in their home.
The War on Terror should begin right here at home. The “jihadis” are not Muslims; they are our own testosterone-fueled, frustrated, depressed children with easy access to killing weapons. Isn’t it time that we refocused our attention away from the Middle East and concentrated our resources on protecting our young kids…from themselves?
Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees: our “Homeland Security” is expending untold billions of dollars on the harassment of immigrants, legal and illegal…while our homeland is being savaged by gun-toting, American-born, pimply-faced Caucasian terrorists.
We need to get our head out of our ass.
School shootings are a symptom of a mortal problem worth solving, because…America’s youth is America’s future.