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Editorials/Columns
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When Will It End?
ou tell us. How many more of our children must
we bury before the majority of Americans get THE MESSAGE and elect representatives to Congress and our legislative bodies who will end the purchase of au- tomatic assault weapons and magazines by ordinary citizens?
We can protect our families and homes with non- military style guns. People can hunt deer and bears without the use of AR-47s and other automatic weapons: correct us if we’re incorrect. So, have we be- come so desensitized by the multiple mass shootings at our schools until the grief, anger, fear, helplessness and disgust we feel each time a school shooting hap- pens that such has become the “no big thing” anymore?
One news source stated the Broward County shoot- ing was the 18th school gun catastrophe this year . . . an average of three per week. The time has come, we be- lieve for Americans to save their children and them- selves from the clutches of organizations that lobby against more gun controls and rail about their 2nd Amendment rights.
No doubt, America’s founders were talking about each American’s right to have a musket and gun-pow- der to protect their lives and homes. However, there is doubt that they foresaw cannons, AK47s, and other weapons of war being owned by average Americans and American teenagers not old enough to buy a beer.
Because state legislators and congressional repre- sentatives care more about being re-elected and filling their campaign coffers than the safety of our nation’s citizens, nothing will change until we vote them out of office.
Remember Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when you vote, next time.
School Zone = Kill Zone
ighteen. That is the
number of school shootings that have already occurred this year and we still haven’t made it out of February.
Here’s another number. One-hundred and Fifty- Thousand. According to a CNN study, that’s how many children have experienced a school shooting in this coun- try since the Columbine mas- sacre in 1999.
Add both of those statis- tics together and you come up with one inescapable con- clusion.... schools are no longer places that can guar- antee safety to our children.
Of course, the educators who work within the system will dispute this characteri- zation. But, the fact of the matter is, outside of turning every learning center into a high-threat security zone equipped with multiple metal detectors, hundreds of facial recognition cameras and heavily armed guards, there really is nothing that can be done to stop a school yard from potentially being turned into a killing field.
And it doesn’t seem to matter if your child attends an “A” graded school, an “F” graded school, a private
academy or a charter SCHOOL. As it stands now, none of these institutions ap- pears capable of performing their most important func- tion —- making sure that our bundles of joy return home in one piece.
A recent example of how easy it is for a gunman or gunwoman to pull off an at- tack on school grounds just occurred last Wednesday af- ternoon in Parkland, Florida —- an affluent community in Broward County that is only a three hour drive from Tampa.
The carnage that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a former student killed 17 people and severely injured 15 more, could have easily taken place at Blake, Arm- wood, Jefferson, Plant, King, or Gaither. And it’s not out of the realm of possibility that, the next time it happens, it won’t be at one of those loca- tions.
In this day and age mass shootings have become the method of choice for any mentally unstable individual with an axe to grind. And school campuses, which are heavily populated with teenagers often distracted by
their hand-held devices, make for perfect soft targets. Of course, the easy solu- tion to this problem, the one that typically comes up whenever one of these tragedies takes place, is for the government to imple- ment stiffer gun control laws. But, in a nation filled with 10 times more firearms than people, it’s hard to imagine someone, hell bent on doing harm to others, not being able to get his hands on a weapon that will help him achieve his goal even if one of those laws went into effect
tomorrow.
For parents and grand-
parents of school-aged chil- dren it’s probably hard to come to terms with the idea that they’re sending the kids, that they love so dearly, to places where there’s even a slight potential for extreme violence. But, in a world that can’t seem to shake this sick- ness, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
I wish that I could offer a foolproof solution that would insulate and protect every child from the madness. But, other than to suggest home schooling, all I can really do is pray for Divine interven- tion because, at this point, that may be the only hope we have left.
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bul- letin Publishing Com- pany. You can contact Mr. Barr at: cbar- ronice@gmail.com.
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