I, like most people, was saddened and troubled by the news of another school shooting. I have family – like my wife- and close friends that pepper the Broward/Miami-Dade County area, so it hit me a little closer to home than many others. This is once again an emotional time, a time to show love, a time to look in the mirror and at each other and start to come up with how to make some real impact. And you’re screwing it all up. I say that with love as I look around and am pretty disappointed in many of my friends for these 5 reasons:
1) Too many people jumped into an echo chamber based on their own biases. You aren’t talking with, trying to understand one another, nor are you compromising. You’re getting nowhere.
2) Many friends are posting fake news and fake facts, that are getting shared around and repeating a destructive cycle. This leads to some people on both sides talking absolute rubbish and make it difficult to talk like adults to those who may know a thing or two. There are some great solutions and middle grounds out here that are getting ignored because you are all too busy fighting and disrespecting one another. If your opinion is worth more than addressing this, please don’t pretend like you’re part of a solution.
3) Few people follow the story as it develops and miss what ended up being the problem to fix. This week, it became clear what the failures were that would have prevented this and other tragedies. This guy was posting stuff on social media, there were 911 calls about him to both local police and the FBI just before the shootings, and worried people were ignored by the people who were supposed to protect them. Moreover, the people who were supposed to stop this, opted for their right to not to. Yes, A POLICE OFFICER DOES NOT HAVE TO SAVE YOU, even if you are the victim of a crime they are witnessing. Thank a recent Supreme Court ruling on that one.
4) We forgot reality. The reality is THIS WILL HAPPEN AS LONG AS THERE IS A WILL. And where there is a will, there is a way. To put a Band-Aid on the problem or make the situation worse is not the answer. Terrible, untenable, unrealistic solutions are being produced by both sides. It’s like people are so driven by fear of _____, they don’t live in reality. There are some decentish solutions out there, but the gems I’m talking about are these two. Teachers shouldn’t be forced to carry guns unless they were drafted and are in a combat zone. That’s ridiculousness and makes you sound not just out of touch, but out of your mind. Scary guns looking shouldn’t be banned on the bias because you do/don’t like guns and don’t know the difference between “scary guns” and “not scary guns” and the really scary guns that are already banned/highly restricted. If you don’t know how it works You just look like a what they call a “gun grabber” and no one logically listens to those people unless they themselves are gun grabbers. The point: Stockpiling weapons
5) It’s like you all forgot what happen in Election 2016. This is exactly what happened. Doesn’t matter what side you’re on, but as a UNITED States of America working towards the common good, we’re in something of a spiraling mess right now. All the anger we have for those who don’t agree with us. Look at the hate. People are getting death threats from the Left, the Right, and a lucky few from BOTH sides.
There are real solutions out there if you cared to listen that aren’t being echoed because they require compromise. In the end, you all want safety and security. It cannot be properly addressed by an application of too much or too little of lethal devices, especially when there are also problems with how the situation was handled by the authorities before the tragedy and the difference between what is popular knowledge of what police have to do and what they actually have to do. Terrible, hastily enacted legislative or executive solutions we impose will haunt us for generations. They seem like a good idea at the time, and then they bite us hard. We see this happening time and time again, from the wars on drugs and terror, to acts that allow warrantless searches or enlist companies to spy on Americans for the government, to DMCA and its overuses and abuses. And I’m still FAR from convinced that the TSA and the rules that it imposes are the solution to the 9/11 hijackers, yet every day we force millions of people to slog it out by their rules while paying $80-$100 and a background check gets you into the “pre 2002” line. If I have to argue that single serving Quaker Oatmeal is NOT A BOMB, but a guy can get through 30-50 screenings a year with a loaded handgun, something is wrong.
If you want to solve this, stop being children and wanting some ideal or some half-baked idea without fully going through the implications. Real children are getting shot. And they’re calling us out on it now.