Emily Witt writes here about her visit to funerals and memorial services and grieving in Parkland, Florida.
Amidst the grief, she found one sterling beam of hope: Emma Gonzalez called “BS” on the ineffectual politicians who could find no reason to do anything at all.
Teachers, social workers, and guidance counselors tried repeatedly to help Nicolas Cruz. His aberrant behavior started in middle school. He was known as a problem. He was referred for therapy. He was sent to a school for emotionally disturbed youth.
Security guards were alerted to search his backpack for guns.
Why was this very troubled, very angry young allowed to buy a gun?
In 1996, Australia experienced a horrendous mass murder known as the Port Arthur Massacre. A man named Martin Bryant went to a popular tourist site and methodically murdered 35 people, including a few that he murdered on his way to Port Arthur and after his departure. Among his victims was a young mother and her two daughters, ages 6 and 3.
This event shocked the nation, which proceeded to enact strict laws about access to guns, registration of guns, and restrictions on private ownership of semi-automatic guns. In addition, the government initiated a massive gun buy-back program.
There has not been a mass murder in Australia since 1996 and the national adoption of meaningful gun controls.
In the U.S., there are a significant number of people who love their guns more than human life.
Will the latest school massacre in Florida turn Americans against the National Rifle Association and its adherents in Congress and state legislatures? Will it be the equivalent of the Port Arthur Massacre?
The New York Times explains the obstacles to any significant change in gun laws in Florida, which is one of the most gun-friendly states in the nation.
“In the wake of Florida’s latest shooting massacre, and calls to tighten its relaxed gun laws, Gov. Rick Scott declared that now, everything was on the table.
“Yet the governor sidestepped whether he would explicitly support new gun restrictions. And he emphasized he would never “trample” on anyone’s constitutional rights.”
Scott is the keynote speaker at the NRA annual convention in Dallas, May 3-6.
“Florida’s gun lobby continues to instill fear in lawmakers. It is led by Marion Hammer, 78, who grew up shooting rabbits, reportedly packs a pistol in her purse and seeks political vengeance on legislators who disappoint her.
“Though Florida is a purple state, Mr. Scott, a favorite of gun lobbyists, and other Republicans control state government, and they have steadfastly opposed new restrictions. For gun-control advocates, victories of late have included steps like defeating legislation to allow some people to carry guns into airport terminals.
Gun owners are now a major constituency, too: Nearly two million residents have permits to carry concealed weapons, far more than any other state…
”Florida’s pro-gun approach came under scrutiny after mass shootings in Orlando in 2016 and in Fort Lauderdale last year. But, little changed in the Statehouse; bills to limit assault weapons, for example, did not get a hearing.
Even after the massacre in Parkland last week, the only movement on gun bills dealt with proposals to expand where guns could be carried, not to restrict them.
”State Senator Dennis Baxley, a Republican who wrote the Stand Your Ground law in 2005 and is a major gun-rights backer, doubts gun-control proposals will gain traction.”
“I don’t see any interest here on that,” said Mr. Baxley, who represents parts of Sumter, Marion and Lake Counties. “We’re pretty comfortable that freedom works.”
”Mr. Baxley likens gun restrictions to imposing limits on forks and spoons to reduce obesity. He argued the focus needs to be on school safety…
”Changing Florida’s gun laws could come down to two things: Whether Ms. Hammer can keep legislators from breaking ranks. And, the ambitions of Mr. Scott, who is increasingly expected to challenge Bill Nelson, the state’s incumbent Democratic senator this year.
”Ms. Hammer, who stands barely 5 feet tall, has been the state’s chief gun lobbyist for decades and was the first woman to serve as national N.R.A. president. The state’s Stand Your Ground and concealed-carry laws were largely her initiatives.
”Legislators, especially Republicans, fear her ability to marshal angry emails from thousands of gun owners in every pocket of the state, destroying ambitions of even onetime allies.
“She can be pretty hard on people who aren’t coming around,” Mr. Baxley said. “She has a long memory when you cross her.”
Will members of the legislature listen to Ms. Hammer and the NRA, or will they listen to the teenagers of the state?
Ms. Hammer, the NRA, AND Governor Scott have blood on their hands. The blood of victims of the Pulse nightclub and the blood of students and staff at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. How many more children and adults will die until they open their eyes and hearts?
Watch Emma Gonzalez’s electrifying speech about the massacre at her high school. She knew the shooter. She calls out the cowardly politicians who take NRA money and send their “thoughts and prayers.”
Trump says he will have a “listening session” with students and teachers on Wednesday.
Will he dare to invite Emma Gonzalez?
She is well-informed and fearless. She speaks for her classmates and her generation.
She will not back down.
Let this be the last mass murder, she says.
Tremble, NRA.
Watch out, Governor Scott.
Time’s up, Senator Rubio.
Emma is coming for you!
From a reader in Florida:
Most of the draconian gun laws in Florida were written by Marion Hammer former president of NRA, she remains a member of the board and longtime Florida lobbyist in Tallahassee. We need more town meetings to discuss bills being presented under innocuous sounding titles too misled us, such as the drafting of the Castle Doctrine, when Stand Your Ground is really the intended bill.
It appears that federal and state legislator and Governor Rick Scott would rather appease the National Rifle Association than protect our children from school massacres. The Valentine’s Day shooting in Broward County has left blood on their hands. Marco Rubio called Broward School Superintendent “Today is that day you pray never comes”. I find little compassion in his comment, knowing he has received $3,303,355. from the NRA to promote gun manufactures.
I wonder how this is going to play out for Rick Scott’s run for US Senate next year with an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association!
The language in this post is usually banned on this blog.
But the story is compelling.
The veteran begins:
“America, can we talk? Let’s just cut the shit for once and actually talk about what’s going on without blustering and pretending we’re actually doing a good job at adulting as a country right now. We’re not. We’re really screwing this whole society thing up, and we have to do better. We don’t have a choice. People are dying. At this rate, it’s not if your kids, or mine, are involved in a school shooting, it’s when. One of these happens every 60 hours on average in the US. If you think it can’t affect you, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. So let’s talk.
“I’ll start. I’m an Army veteran. I like M-4’s, which are, for all practical purposes, an AR-15, just with a few extra features that people almost never use anyway. I’d say at least 70% of my formal weapons training is on that exact rifle, with the other 30% being split between various and sundry machineguns and grenade launchers. My experience is pretty representative of soldiers of my era. Most of us are really good with an M-4, and most of us like it at least reasonably well, because it is an objectively good rifle. I was good with an M-4, really good. I earned the Expert badge every time I went to the range, starting in Basic Training. This isn’t uncommon. I can name dozens of other soldiers/veterans I know personally who can say the exact same thing. This rifle is surprisingly easy to use, completely idiot-proof really, has next to no recoil, comes apart and cleans up like a dream, and is light to carry around. I’m probably more accurate with it than I would be with pretty much any other weapon in existence. I like this rifle a lot. I like marksmanship as a sport. When I was in the military, I enjoyed combining these two things as often as they’d let me.
“With all that said, enough is enough…
”I understand that people want to be able to own guns. That’s ok. We just need to really think about how we’re managing this. Yes, we have to manage it, just as we manage car ownership. People have to get a license to operate a car, and if you operate a car without a license, you’re going to get in trouble for that. We manage all things in society that can pose a danger to other people by their misuse. In addition to cars, we manage drugs, alcohol, exotic animals (there are certain zip codes where you can’t own Serval cats, for example), and fireworks, among other things. We restrict what types of businesses can operate in which zones of the city or county. We have a whole system of permitting for just about any activity a person wants to conduct since those activities could affect others, and we realize, as a society, that we need to try to minimize the risk to other people that comes from the chosen activities of those around them in which they have no say. Gun ownership is the one thing our country collectively refuses to manage, and the result is a lot of dead people.
“I can’t drive a Formula One car to work. It would be really cool to be able to do that, and I could probably cut my commute time by a lot. Hey, I’m a good driver, a responsible Formula One owner. You shouldn’t be scared to be on the freeway next to me as I zip around you at 140 MPH, leaving your Mazda in a cloud of dust! Why are you scared? Cars don’t kill people. People kill people. Doesn’t this sound like bullshit? It is bullshit, and everybody knows. Not one person I know would argue non-ironically that Formula One cars on the freeway are a good idea. Yet, these same people will say it’s totally ok to own the firearm equivalent because, in the words of comedian Jim Jeffries, “f… you, I like guns”.
“Yes, yes, I hear you now. We have a second amendment to the constitution, which must be held sacrosanct over all other amendments. Dude. No. The constitution was made to be a malleable document. It’s intentionally vague. We can enact gun control without infringing on the right to bear arms. You can have your deer rifle. You can have your shotgun that you love to shoot clay pigeons with. You can have your target pistol. Get a license. Get a training course. Recertify at a predetermined interval. You do not need a military grade rifle. You don’t. There’s no excuse.
“But we’re supposed to protect against tyranny! I need the same weapons the military would come at me with!” Dude. You know where I can get an Apache helicopter and a Paladin?! Hook a girl up! Seriously, though, do you really think you’d be able to hold off the government with an individual level weapon? Because you wouldn’t. One grenade, and you’re toast. Don’t have these illusions of standing up to the government, and needing military style rifles for that purpose. You’re not going to stand up to the government with this thing. They’d take you out in about half a second.
“Let’s be honest. You just want a cool toy, and for the vast majority of people, that’s all an AR-15 is. It’s something fun to take to the range and put some really wicked holes in a piece of paper. Good for you. I know how enjoyable that is. I’m sure for a certain percentage of people, they might not kill anyone driving a Formula One car down the freeway, or owning a Cheetah as a pet, or setting off professional grade fireworks without a permit. Some people are good with this stuff, and some people are lucky, but those cases don’t negate the overall rule. Military style rifles have been the choice du jour in the incidents that have made our country the mass shootings capitol of the world. Formula One cars aren’t good for commuting. Cheetahs are bitey. Professional grade fireworks will probably take your hand off. All but one of these are common sense to the average American. Let’s fix that. Be honest, you don’t need that AR-15. Nobody does. Society needs them gone, no matter how good you may be with yours. Kids are dying, and it’s time to stop f…ing around.”
Common Dreams reports the news about the mass protests planned for April 20.
Students, teachers, parents, everyone outraged by the Parkland Massacre will join together on the same day, which is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre.
Students led by National School Walkout will encourage mass walkouts on that date.
The Network for Public Education is working alongside the AFT, the NEA, the BATS, LULAC, AASA, and other groups to promote actions in every schoool district in the country on April 20.
David Berliner gave his blessing!
The great education expert David Berliner supports the April 20 plan.
“The students’ call-to-action comes days after David Berliner, an educational psychologist and Regents’ Professor of Education Emeritus at Arizona State University, issued a call for a national teachers’ strike if lawmakers continue their failure to enact “sane gun laws.”
“Berliner’s call, which he sent in a message to education historian Diane Ravitch, states, in part, “Almost all of America’s 3 million teachers—nurturers and guardians of our youth—want sensible gun laws. They deserve that. But they have to be ready to exert the power they have by walking out of their schools if they do not get what they want. They have to exert the reputational power that 3 million of our most admired voters have. Neither the NRA nor their legislative puppets will be able stand up to that.”
“He originally said the day should be May 1, May Day, but after being flooded with responses including from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, he explained to Slate the day got switched to April 20.
“April 20,” he told Slate, “will become the day on which teachers can say, ‘No. You will never ever be elected again if you don’t pass sensible laws, and there are all sorts of things that can be done that don’t violate the Constitution.’ I’ve just had enough.”
“A web page calling for pledges to commit to an April 20 action and sponsored by the Network for Public Education, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and other organizations says, “The failure to enact rational laws around the purchase of guns that are designed for mass shootings is inexcusable. The time to act is now. Every child deserves to learn in a school that is safe.”
“A separate nationwide walkout event sponsored by organizers of the Women’s March is scheduled for March 14. Rather than a day-long event, that action is scheduled to take place “for 17 minutes at 10am across every time zone … to protest Congress’ inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods.”
Very likely, Governor Scott will solve the contradiction by lowering the age when a person may buy a beer to 18.
Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, weaseled out of answering any questions on why it’s okay to sell weapons to teenagers with no waiting period. He should be able to answer that easily, as he’s the one who signed the bills into law.
Scott’s reluctance to commit to any solutions can be explained by his endorsements. He’s championed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), with an “A+ rating.” In 2014, the NRA’s Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) praised Scott, stating “Rick has signed more pro-gun bills into law in one term than any other governor in Florida history.”
Scott said “there’s a time” to talk about gun control – but it seems like that time is never now. While Governor Scott is dodging questions, our kids are dodging bullets.
David Atkins writes in Washington Monthly that there is only one way to reduce gun violence and that’s to reduce the number of guns.
He writes:
”I’m tired of this. Americans are tired of this. Mass shootings are now occurring with a depressing regularity, including well over a dozen school shootings 2018 alone.
“Each and every time we are subjected to the same arguments, a circular merry-go-round of desperate anger from families and mainstream Americans, shocking bad faith and callousness by those who want to preserve the status quo, and callous opportunism by those trying to shoehorn their own separate issue advocacy into the discussion. The cycle of violence and reaction is a mandala of pain and futility.
“And every time the bottom line is and remains the same: if you want to end gun violence, reduce the number of guns. It’s that simple. There is no other answer. The simple reason is that the only difference between America and other industrialized nations on the issues so often blamed for gun violence is access to guns.
“It’s not mental health. While American underfunded treatment of mental health issues is terrible, mental illness is also often stigmatized and underfunded in other countries. Nor is there any reason to believe that Americans are, per capita, suffering from greater mental illness than Japanese or Swedes or Peruvians.
“It’s not violent movies or video games. Every industrialized culture across the world consumes these entertainments. The French, the Kenyans and the South Koreans watch The Matrix and play Halo, but they don’t have a school shooting every week…
”There is only one common denominator: the guns. There is no cultural solution to this problem. There is no funding solution to this problem. There is no other, easy way out.
“Either we reduce access to guns (and particularly to semi-automatic rifles), or we are going to see this again. And again. And again. And again.
“But if we must continue to endure the killings, at least let’s stop going through the cycle of the same garbage arguments. Let’s just concede that we are choosing to place the right of people to own weapons of death, over the lives of thousands–including schoolchildren.”
Max Boot, foreign policy expert, wrote this article in the Washington Post about the NRA’s devilish distortion of the Second Amendment:
He begins:
“In 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted, the state-of-the-art firearm was a flintlock musket firing paper cartridges loaded with gunpowder and a lead ball. Given the laborious loading procedures, a skilled soldier could fire at most two or three shots a minute. The smoothbore flintlock lacked both stopping power and accuracy; hence the need for lines of soldiers to fire from point-blank range at each other.
“Nikolas Cruz did not come to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., toting a musket. Police say he came with an AR-15 rifle, which typically comes equipped with 30-round magazines and can easily fire 45 rounds per minute. And it fires not lead balls but .223 rounds that at close range could make the head of a Viet Cong soldier “explode” or turn his torso into “one big hole.”
“Little wonder that the AR-15 and its variants have become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. It was employed not only allegedly by Cruz but also (among other weapons) by Adam Lanza, who used it to kill 27 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School; by James Holmes to kill 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater; by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik to kill 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif.; by Devin Patrick Kelley to kill 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex.; and by Stephen Paddock, who used a modified version which allowed near-automatic rates of fire, to kill 58 people in Las Vegas in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Three of these shootings — Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas and Parkland — have all occurred in the past five months. In other words, the danger is growing.
“No other country experiences this kind of terror on an ongoing basis — save places such as Afghanistan and Syria that are actually at war. The United States has 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but, according to a University of Alabama researcher , between 1966 and 2012 it had 31 percent of all gunmen involved in mass shootings. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that Americans own 48 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns, far more per capita than any other country. (Yemen is No. 2 but lags far behind.)
“It simply beggars the imagination that Republicans, in thrall to the National Rifle Association, continue to insist there is no relationship between gun ownership and gun crime. Instead of effective regulations, they offer “thoughts and prayers,” as if mass shootings were acts of God like earthquakes and hurricanes that mere mortals are powerless to prevent. This was Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R.-La.) after the Las Vegas shooting: “I just hate to see this issue politicized. I don’t know why bad things happen to good people, but they do in this world, and what happened in Las Vegas was terrible. But we can’t legislate away every problem in the world.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 