Solutions

I am thinking about solutions--to the horrific problem of extreme gun violence in our country.

My primary interest is not the right to possess guns. Actually, the Second Amendment says--keep and bear arms. And in that amendment ARMS are not defined. There are some weapons you can't have--NCBR weapons (yes, I had to look it up; it means Nuclear, Chemical, Biological and Radiation).

So right there a limitation has been made.

What I want to offer brief comments on some of the types of solutions that have been advanced to solve the problem of gun massacres in schools.

Here's a sampling:
Stockpile rocks in classrooms so if a shooter bursts into the room, students can throw rocks at him (or her) rather than passively waiting to be shot.I am speechless at this suggestion. If someone held a gun and was intent on killing people and someone threw a rock, what do you think the shooter would do? 

Teach students first aid, so they can spring to the rescue of their fallen classmates and teachers.  And do what? Recent articles have detailed the horrific internal damage an AR-15 wreaks on the human body. The Atlantic magazine described it this way: "One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem."

But, sure, go ahead, teach first aid.

Arm teachers. A proposal has been widely floated to arm teachers--maybe every teacher or some teachers specially trained. So they could?  So they could return fire.In a wonderfully delicious ironic way, there have been a few recent incidents where teachers DID have a gun in the classroom.  And... (drum roll) ... in one instance the teacher inadvertently shot himself; in another the gun accidentally discharged, hitting the ceiling and dislodging some tile which fell on a student below, thereby injuring that student.

Yeah, arming teachers sounds like a terrific idea. Oh, do you want teachers to also -- teach?  baby-sit your children at times? make sure the children learn everything? prep the students for mandatory test?  buy school supplies because public school funding is diminishing? work long hours at school and then long hours at home, prepping or grading papers? 

Improve security in schools presumably so that EVERYONE entering a school has to go through security including metal detectors.  I can understand why this suggestion has appeal. In fact one of those recommending it was the father of a Parkland student who was killed.  But I think we need to examine the sheer numbers.

Well, now--let's see: in 2013-14 there were 98,271 public schools in the U.S. (In a delicious irony, that stat comes from the U.S. Department of Education website...but don't tell Betsy DeVos...)

How many public school students are there? Again, thanks to the U.S. Department of Education we know there are 50.7 million students who enrolled in the fall of 2017.  So, let's see--using airport security as a model, for improved security in public schools you would need metal detectors in every school, and at every entrance if the school has more than one entrance. You would need trained security personnel to screen the backpacks that are being put through scanners.  You would need to keep that security in place ALL DAY LONG, and evenings too when there are after school activities.    

Oh, what about outdoor athletic events?  

Do you want to hazard a guess as to how much time would be chewed up just getting kids into school?  If you assume that each student can be cleared in 5 minutes (how long does it take you to get through airport security?) then the total time would be 5,700,000 minutes or 95,000 hours.  Obviously that's not every school, but if you know the number of students in your public schools in elementary and secondary schools, you can do your own multiplier.  The school district where I live has 11,059 students. So each day, assuming a 5 minutes clearance time, my school district would be using 95,000 minutes to make schools more secure.
-----------------------------------

Food for thought--how much less complicated would gun control be? (Please note the phrase is CONTROL, not BAN.)

The Pottery Barn Rule

Remember that expression--you broke it, you bought it? Well, that's how I feel today. And who, you might say, broke it?

Well, this day after the U.S. presidential election, like many people I am scratching my head and wondering what happened. But more so, I am wondering WHY did it happen.

This is a very simplistic commentary--of course, there are many many reasons why we find ourselves where we are today. One particular reason stands out to me: people are fed up with Washington, DC and the sense that "government" is broken.

And they are right; it is broken. But it was broken intentionally.

Do you recall what Senator Mitch McConnell said in the lead-up to the mid-term elections (i.e. two years into President Obama's first term)? In response to the question what was the top job for Republicans in that mid-term election, McConnell said:

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

He went on to say that the objectives that the Republicans had then could not be realized as long as President Obama could veto legislative efforts.  So, he was urging Republicans to present every obstacle to any of President Obama's initiatives. (As an example, consider the 60 some times Congress tried to repeal so-called "Obamacare.")

In this election of 2016, many analysts are pointing out how disgusted people are that the government  is dysfunctional at best or broken.  When you have the leader of the U.S. Senate saying, in advance of any legislation, that Republicans should work against President Obama "if he didn't meet them half-way" how can you have a government that works?

So having sown the wind, we now inherit the whirlwind.  And that's where I get to the part of this blog that explains the title.

One of the great motivations for the choices people made in this election was broken government. When I read a statement such as Senator McConnell's, I can't help but think "you broke it; you bought it."

There's no ducking responsibility here. In one of the commentaries I heard leading up to this election, as pundits were discussing what effect a win by Hillary Clinton would have on Congress, someone said "well, Congress would have to find a way to work with her" working across party lines.  And then, in response to the query how Congress might work with Donald Trump, the commentator paused and then said--"that's going to be a lot more difficult because Trump is in their party."

Think of that--a lot harder to work with your own candidate than to work with the opposition candidate.  I can envision what the next four years will be like. More broken government? All too likely. And the American people will keep on being angry. Who knows what their next response response to broken government might be.

I just hope that, after the whirlwind, there isn't a tornado. Right now, my feelings are too raw to dismiss that dark thought.
-----------------------
If you like the looks of the vase featured in the photo, you can go here.

The Lottery

Here’s a grim conflation of thoughts: on this day (January 11), the first recorded state lottery occurred in 1569—Queen Elizabeth I instituted it in England (read more here).

Once that caught on, other lotteries popped up various places, including the early American colonies, where lotteries helped capitalize early development.

Now, in 2016 the U.S. is seized with an overwhelming lottery fever with the Powerball in January, which has reached—as I write this—a total of over 1 billion dollars.  Yes, I did write Billion. (No doubt, Queen Elizabeth I would LOVE such a national outpouring of … madness for money.)

Of course, there have been other lotteries.  Think the draft lottery in the 1960s, during the Vietnam conflict. Thousands of men drew the wrong number, were sent to Vietnam and then were killed there.

One of the most astonishing and horrifying stories in American literature is Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery.”*  It is such a riveting story, and when you read it the first time—it takes your breath away.

Oh, my—I just had a sudden awful thought. Since Donald Trump is so derisive and dismissive of immigrants in our country, I hope he doesn’t read the story “The Lottery.” It might give him an idea of how to “get rid of immigrants.” One at a time.

Nah—I feel a bit relieved. Such an approach while sensational, would be far too slow, not splashy enough for his Trumpness.** Does this conflated thought sound crazy to you? Me, too.  But then, I thought people taking his Trumpness seriously and actually voting for him sounded crazy.

------------------

*If you have not read it, you can here.

** From here ever after, I shall refer to him as his Trumpness.

An Open Letter to Donald Trump

I have one message for you—STOP IT. 

• Stop saying you want to make our country great again, and then spend most of your time on the campaign trail belittling and diminishing and marginalizing people. 
• Stop playing on the fears and prejudices of people so that you bring out the ugliest of ugly behavior.
• Stop making it acceptable to boo a peaceful protestor and have her escorted--based on prior “orders to remove all disruptive” attendees at one of your rallies.
• Stop being the huckster that you are—handing out thousands of FREE tickets for one of your “shows” to be held in venues that will not accommodate the number of people who want to see your “events”.  
• Stop saying the fire wardens or other reasonable officials won’t let all the people in who want to be at these “events” when in fact that was part of the planning, part of the PLAN—making it seem that your events are so popular that thousands want to get in. 
• Stop making it acceptable to be a racist—yelling racial slurs and physically attacking people.
• Stop setting our country back 200 hundred years.
• Stop saying things like "There is hatred against us that is unbelievable. It's their hatred, it's not our hatred."
• Stop pretending that you have the moral high ground so that you castigate a former president for his own sexual indiscretions when your life is far from a shining example of purity.
• Stop taking our country down a road that history has seen played out many times before, most recently Germany in the 1930s.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Just STOP IT.

• Before the Statue of Liberty has to lower her lamp and change the message to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” to EVERYBODY WHO IS NOT WHITE JUST GO AWAY.
• Before we are too far down the road to a frightening vision of governing.
• Before we end up on the dust heap of history, another failed nation.

Before we lose whatever greatness we may have had.

Why the Silence?

So, why the silence?

I realize it has been a month since I wrote a blog.  Please understand, this is not for lack of thinking.  I am thinking about many blog worthy topics.  I even have a draft of one blog saved that I return to from time to time, trying to figure out how to express my thoughts on one of those conundrum topics that dogs our society.

I also have the occasional fleeting thought in the morning--and muse: that would make a good blog.  But by evening, the thought has flown, and--try as I might--I can't summon it back into my brain.  So, the topic goes unaddressed, the thought unexpressed.

So, today, an event happened--and it was obvious that silence was not the appropriate response. So, what happened?  A shooting in a school. A student killed by gunshot from a fellow student.  A teacher threatened and chased by the gun wielder.  A school in lock-down.  Frantic parents gathered just hoping to catch a glimpse of their child.

So, you say? Well, your lack of interest is understandable, if you think of how many SCHOOL shootings there have been, since Adam Lanza bashed his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot and killed 20 students and 6 adults.  That was in December, 2012--LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO.

Since then, there have been 74 shootings in school--in less than two year.  A map here shows the locations of these incidents.

Less than a month ago, when the troubled young man Elliott Rodger went on his stabbing and shooting rampage, Richard Martinez, the anguished father of one of the victims, asked "When will this insanity stop?"

Well, if you were making policy for the NRA, you would do everything in your power to make sure it never stops.  In fact, what you would do is move beyond blocking any reasonable gun control measure and begin to advocate for open carry laws in as many states as possible.  After all, as Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA, said--the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

So to make sure that good guy with a gun has a gun at all times, make sure that open carry laws are passed everywhere.  There is, of course, a HUGE problem with this reasoning.

Jon Stewart illustrated the problem so brilliantly. He points out that this "perpetual violence" cycle is in fact an excellent "business plan for arms dealers."

Stewart's observations were downright prescient given the story from this past Sunday (June 8) when Jerad and Amanda Miller walked into a local restaurant in Las Vegas, walked past two policemen eating lunch, then turned around and shot the policemen, killing both.  They then took the police service weapons and left to continuing shooting and killing a block away.  Well, two bad guys with guns shot and killed two good guys with guns.  So much for the "only thing that stops a bad guy."  Sounds like an absolute illustration of a cycle of "perpetual violence."

So, why the silence?

Why are so many of us intimidated by the advocates of ever-expanding gun rights? Why does an organization with a membership of about 3 million (despite Wayne LaPierre's claim of 4.5 million) hold such sway over a nation of over 300 million?

Why has a Constitutional amendment that has an introductory phrase, that most grammarians would suggest applies to the interpretation of the remainder of the statement, become bastardized and transmogrified into an assertion of absolute right to own guns that MUST NOT IN ANY WAY BE MODERATED?  Every other one of the original Bill of Rights has been debated, moderated and interpreted.

How did freedom to own guns become more sacrosanct than freedom of religion? freedom of speech? freedom peaceably to assemble? freedom from unreasonable search and seizure? freedom from cruel and unusual punishment?

So many people over the decades have raised their voices in protest against the unrestrained right to own guns.  James and Sarah Brady.  Gabrielle Gifford and Mark Kelly.  Parents of students at Columbine High School.  Carolyn McCarthy.  The friends and family of Virginia Tech shootings. The entire community of Newtown (Sandy Hook Elementary School). Richard Martinez. They have raised their voices in anguish, in sorrow, in pleading. They ask why?  They urge us to do something. They want us to vow "never again."

I realize I haven't named all the places where mass shootings have occurred over the decades or all the people whose lives have been inexorably changed forever.

So, why our silence?

The people who craft and pass the laws that govern gun control are hearing someone's voice.  If the only voice they hear comes from the NRA, we know what the response will be.  So, why our silence?