This week, we learned of a disturbed love struck teen who walked into a school in Maryland with a handgun and opened fire on his classmates. The casualty count was contained thanks to the armed resource officer who responded. Thank goodness for the good guy with a gun who “neutralized” him: the heroic resource officer killed him in cold blood. Never mind there was another student killed and another injured. Never mind the broken lives of the other classmates. These were teens who witnessed their friend shoot a handgun, ran for their lives and watched their friends fall broken. Never mind they had to witness the friendly resource officer who they had trusted kill their classmate. Never mind that the gunman’s mother has lost a child. A child she has cared for in years past in thick and thin. A child who may have been bullied himself. A child, who just like his parents, felt he needed a gun for to protect himself. Never mind lives shattered and lives broken.
Never mind there is no triumph in killing a disturbed teen. Never mind this was likely his suicide. Never mind that assisting a suicide is a crime in every state in America and we assisted him. Never mind that a gun is the tool WE give our teens to settle their differences. Never mind that the next suicidal teen can now know he can die triumphantly in a hail of gunfire in his suicidal mission: a martyr to showing us how he was wronged. Never mind the costs of this “success”.
But hey, now that the “good guy with a gun” plan worked NRA will tell us we need to implement the rest of their vision. Soon, we can have “peace” knowing our children will be safe. Teens, who will respect authority, will safely walk through metal detectors into schools secured with tall walls covered with barbed wires. We will do regular school shooting drills and lockdowns so they are prepared. We will tell them not to fall to false leads like fire alarms. We will make them put their belonging in see through backpacks (exposing their privacy). Tough teachers with machine guns will watch over them. We will have other armed guards outside school too. Snipers perched on roof tops or armed “patriots” will guard school entrances, bus stops, and parking lots. NRA promises we can secure our schools.
But physical security is only part of it. We will monitor kids’ speech on their social media and their phones for their personal and dating habits. We will monitor each one for any sign of disturbance that may make him snap. We will hire Cambridge Analytical to build psychological profiles of kids and keep these profiles in secret files. We will report the suspicious ones, the lonely ones, the angry ones, and the heart broken ones to authorities. Authorities will peer into their lives and interrogate them. We will read their private thoughts, search their houses, and publish their name on “banned lists”. We will label the dangerous ones “mentally ill”. We will pull them out of classrooms and send them mandatory programs, like mental health boot camps. We will handle these troubled ones with a strong fist. Yes, NRA will tell us, we can secure our schools.
Sure this will cost a lot. The physical security will cost money. The security guards will cost money. Building the mental health assessment, you guessed. Insuring teachers who carry guns will also cost money. There may be less money left for counseling, violence prevention, or teaching. Some of our children will cower in corners from what they have witnessed or because of fear of all the armed guards around them. But, hey, this is the price of “our liberty”. We are armed so we can fight government tyranny. In our school, as secure as high security prisons, we will tell our children they can feel free.
This week we saw the vision of “success” in NRA’s way of protecting America’s children. I repudiate this vision. NRA is not defending liberty. It is imposing a tyranny we have already endured way too long. The march on this Saturday 3/24 is our march to end their tyranny.
wordpress.com/...