School walkouts go Nationwide as students push for gun control

With U.S. mass shootings totaling 1,600 since Sandy Hook in 2012, school shootings and these tragedies’ responses have become a norm. Put it on page 27 below the fold, maybe?

“To let our fellow countrymen fall beside us without fighting back is to me equal to leaving a soldier to die in the battlefield”. Twitter is exploding with their rage: “You are the President of the United States, and you have the audacity to put this on Russian Federation as an excuse”.

On the one hand, the Second Amendment is an essential safeguard against government tyranny. This week, the president has pushed mostly for modest steps already backed by the National Rifle Association – which is a powerful influence among gun owners in numerous areas that propelled Trump to the presidency. They aren’t for hunting, and they aren’t necessary for protection. “Don’t comment on guns unless you know something about them”, I screamed at how someone could be so shrill to turn a debate of this magnitude into a battle of parsing words. Perhaps we should repeal?

After reading “guns don’t kill people”, I thought about the photographs of the 17 children and adults now dead – victims of rounds expended from the chamber of an AR-15. Until 2008, they were banned. Working within the constraints of the amendment leads to policies such as banning assault weapons and instituting background checks for private gun sales. When a shooting occurs, it is not a surprise; we have been locked into a routine of mass shootings since April 1999. All of these ideas and more need consideration, but more than that, they need ACTION! They can earn support from people who favor gun rights. This country was founded upon violence and grew that way, helped by political banners that conveniently have always presented the “American way” as the “right way”, not just for this violent and hypocritical country, but for the whole world. Other factors are our high teenage death rate in automobile accidents and our shooting death epidemic that is 49 times greater than in other wealthy nations. It is BS for our legislators to be so beholden to the NRA that they disregard the will of the majority of American voters who want sensible gun laws. Send government goons to kick down every door in the country to search for them? They’d rust. Those used for target practice would wear out. In states requiring a permit that is obtained at a law enforcement agency to purchase a gun, studies show that gun use is much lower than in states that do not require a permit. Cars, boats, even bicycles, cats and dogs must be registered. White people were killed for assisting African Americans. Unfettered gun ownership is undermining the safety of communities throughout the country. You do not uphold the Constitution, and you’ve violated our human rights.

It’s unclear what that action will look like in his own state, though. The gunman who massacred more than 50 people at a concert in Las Vegas previous year used such a device. Being mentally ill isn’t a crime, and a precautionary measure shouldn’t be treated like a punishment. It would be very hard to achieve – a Democratic Senate mustered only 40 votes for it after the Sandy Hook massacre – and have nearly no effect even if it succeeded. That’s very broad. The metric is also highly subjective. This increase and transformation seems more a cultural happening – a culture-bound social process – than purely an isolated expression of mental illness. Transgender people are still on the list.

“How would you feel knowing your kid who went to school on Valentines Day will never come home”, said one student. If they were the same. or similar enough to result in mass fatalities, under whatever circumstances – you can rest assured that our inability to solve them would be the same, too. for exactly the same reason. If you jailed everyone who acts unusual or right-wing or loopy, half the country would be locked up. On the other hand, what kind of society executes a “broken child”, possibly autistic, nearly certainly emotionally damaged, absolutely wrecked by the recent death of his mother, his last surviving parent?

Likely some minds drawn today to mass killing would be less so when societal message and law no longer worships guns unconditionally, no longer readily offers salvation through the gun.