Parched land no desert sand, sun was just a dot,
And a little bit of water goes a long way, ’cause it’s hot.
Three good buddies were laughing and smoking in the back
Of a rented Ford.
They couldn’t know they weren’t going far.
from Then Came the Last Days of May by Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser
.
Though the school year ends and vacations soon begin we are forced to forget our dreams for the lazy days of summer and face the ugly reality of gun violence in America.
This time ten died and at least 10 others were injured.
Already the social media trolls have tried to spin the narrative. The shooter was white supremacist. No, he was Antifa. Guns are the problem and we need to get rid of them. No, what we need are more of them. Oh, and the kids are crisis actors. I mean, are there really that many dumbasses in America? Apparently so.
Once more I feel this inferno of gut-wrenching pain and fiery anger. My heart aches for the injured and for the families of the dead while simultaneously I rage at the fact that nothing has changed since Parkland, since Las Vegas, since Sandy Hook.
Again politicians offer thoughts and prayers. Again they promise to do something to stop this from happening. Ironically the same politicians vowing action today just 2 weeks ago assured the NRA their top priority was protecting gun rights. I find it bitter irony that today’s shooter stepped all over Trump’s attempt to move the public’s attention from guns to abortion.
We cannot depend on our elected officials to do anything about common sense gun legislation. Hell, my Congressman thinks rocks are causing sea-level rise. Can he actually be expected to think sensibly about anything?
As per usual, it’s up to us, pardner. Are you going to be one of the rabid armchair quarterbacks posting to social media from the safety of your home, or are you going to get up off your ass and take some action?
I am donating to candidates who refuse to accept donations from the NRA. Some candidates are seeking designation as a Gun Sense candidate by Moms Demand Action. I have signed on to work with groups who promote sensible gun legislation. I’ve volunteered to phone bank for gun sense candidates. In the process of taking action I’ve met some new, like-minded people, and I feel like I’m making a difference.
National Gun Violence Awareness Day events will be held the weekend of June 1-3. Sign up to attend a local event at WearOrange.org, then don some orange and join us. I’ll be out there. Will you?
Dogpaddling Through Life 
As long as everyone takes the NRA money, we will never find a solution.
They won’t take the money if we vote for the candidates that don’t.
Hear! Hear! I’ll be thinking orange on the 2nd, since I don’t own any orange nor will I be leaving the house. But wishing for change as fun violence is such a waste! Cheers,H
Thanks for your long-distance support! We need all the help we can get!
I’m just shaking my head at rocks cause sea-level rise. Rocks? That would be a seriously unimaginable amount of rocks that suddenly appeared.
The worst part is his district includes rocket scientists who work for NASA 🙄
Oh – I have plenty of orange – Safety Orange, so I don’t get shot when hunters are around ! Wisechoice for a symbolic color !
No more guns.
You are 100% correct! We need to vote out those beholden to the almighty $, and vote in people who represent the people.
I really hope for change this time. I would march if I were on your side of the Atlantic! The best I can do is some tweets.
If people would only go back to obeying the law…like the one that about murder. (There’s a state law here that all guns must be locked away if there’s a child in the home – and another that says “if a “child under 18” is allowed access to a gun and it is loaded and he/she harms someone, the parent will be charged…2 laws. Neither followed. Didn’t stop kids from being killed.)
Sigh. (Sante Fe is just a stone’s throw from here – luckily the security officer ran towards the gunfire this time – he’s now upgraded to serious condition.)
Work with your local elected officials and elected state officials – much faster and better results.
Sit down and brainstorm all the specific ideas that you and your friends can come up with to make kids safer in schools and then email/mail that list to local/county/state law enforcement agencies, the mayor, the school board, principals, the superintendents and to the loons up in DC (who are so fixated on Bimbo’s – like none of the preceding Prez had the same. Seriously – get back to work up there…if we could only had term limits to break up the “in” groups that clutch power)
Marching and saying “Change” isn’t working. Time to get specific actions(like why wearing a coat when it’s 95F?) Clear backpacks have been used in this area since the 80’s in some districts around here, some schools have removed lockers, there needs to be a panic button not on the teacher’s wall but on her person – sometimes you cannot get to the wall…One monitored entrance and exit during school hours with registry of photo ID and stated reason before allowed in – that works here – but you have to make sure kids aren’t unlocking windows or propping doors open…. different “alarms/bells/buzzer signal for different situations – there used to have 3 signal bells for fire and 4 for “duck and cover”, something else for bomb scare….and when a kid is known to be agitated and unstable, he/she must be removed from the general population to protect the innocent….mental health is unpredictable, but at Parkland EVERYONE knew and said something and authorities did nothing…that has to stop. ALL it takes is one unstable or explosively angry person that sees violence is a solution.
Send the list of ideas and demand those be adopted (and stay on it ask why not done – get the media) until the human race can regain its’ sense of right and wrong and until society gets serious about intervening with mentally ill and unstable people…not to mention all those who have absorbed all the reality show temper tantrums on tv.
Adults must gut it up, control themselves and show kids how to behave. Laws must be obeyed., ALL must repeat endlessly: Do not kill. Do not harm. Guns are only for protection when you can get away and your back is against the wall and the one in front of you is determined to kill you. Cowards use guns to solve problems. And call killers what they are “Murderers”, not the softer: “alleged” shooters. (I am not an NRA member and firmly against arming teachers – it would be too much to ask to put them in the position to shoot a child)
Until then. Yes, speak up with specifics and march to raise awareness… then….roll up your sleeves locally and get to work.
Violence in school isn’t really new – just before schools and media had an agreement not to dwell on incidents to protect kids and to prevent copycats. A bomb went off killing kids when I was in elementary school – not far from my school. My husband’s sisters were in that school which still stands. His dad was one of the first docs on the scene. I took a gun from a 9th grade boy in mid 70’s – he walked in, I said give me that and took it from him and told him to sit down and be quiet until principal came…that was just few weeks after a boy walked into his English class and killed his teacher for giving him a B+ on a paper rather than an A. We were all pretty nervous that year. Each year my dad, and my uncles – all superintendents, principals, teachers would take all the knives, guns, chains, weapons they had collected that year and mangle them and then bury them in various spots on the family farm…we laugh now what the current owners will think if they ever stumble across those dumps.
Middle school/Jr high/High school is a time of turmoil. Kids need models and skills to get past their hard times without resorting to violence – adults have to teach those.
I suggest some big time protest against the new video game allowing the player to be a school shooter – with most of the victims being females.
We’re all angry and fed up – and tired of the funerals
Enough thoughts, prayers, and talk.
The problem with your suggestion that we work with our elected officials is we’ve been doing that to no avail. Honestly, when 80% of the population says we need to tighten gun laws and yet our elected officials instead loosen them, there’s a problem. And one of those problems is that we’ve led people to believe that we can use guns to solve our problems.
Here in Alabama our governor has decided we should arm school administrators to protect kids, mostly because we’re too damn cheap to pay for armed and trained security guards. Because there will be a comment period, we are working together on how to respond to her idea, which I think is ridiculous. When I was in school our administrators were either on an ego trip or burnout teachers hiding in an office. None of them should have a loaded weapon on their person while at work. It also means that we’re going to now choose to promote people based on whether or not they’re willing to carry a firearm and not because they have the best interest of children in mind.
As for obeying laws, perhaps we could start by actually FAIRLY enforcing laws. Seems like these white kid shooters had lots of contact with law enforcement and nothing happened, while a 12 year old black kid with a toy gun in a park was shot and killed within 1 minute of the cops showing up. Just a thought.
State’s laws vary so much.
The last sentence of the first paragraph is so true. Violence of all types is seen as a normal solution.
And the sentence about equal attention to any kid/parent breaking laws or not using commonsense to protect their child and society. Seem to me society has become soooo kind and unwilling to give the appearance of hurting someone’s feelings….as well as being afraid of being sued, that red flags are being ignored as everyone waits for others to do something. The Supreme Court rulings have hogtied schools – suggest a kid needs mental help and the district may and did end up being forced by parents with lawyers to pay for it (schools responsible for giving teaching all students and giving them the tools/materials/situations that they need to learn – that was one of the rulings. Also teacher may be cursed, assaulted, but teacher may not lay a hand on a child…many teachers are told not to even hug a child to comfort them by some school district lawyers)
The boy in Sante Fe is from a Greek family (The Greek communities are very close here and he was active in one of the performance dance groups) – they did go through the hurricane flood. He apparently wanted to date the girl friend of his best friend who had broken up several months ago. According to parents/students he pestered her constantly for months even though she told him she wasn’t interested. Finally a few days before the murders, she had had enough and stood up in class and told him to leave her alone that she would never date him. Humiliation and an attack manhood is a powerful trigger., She was the first one shot. The whole thing was over in 4 min once the security office got there a- the rest of the 22 min were officers trying to talk to the kid to get him to not kill himself, put his gun down, and come out. Shock and bewilderment for all.
If you notice, most of the victims are female.
We have not heard from his mom, but his dad is belligerent when found. Apparently his relatives in Greece have been contacting him and railing him for raising a killer. Watching him, I wonder if there was any history of domestic violence in the home which the boy witnessed growing up. Violence breeds violence
Alabama is a tough one, I admit. The schools there tend to lag behind a bit. One thing we lan to do is demand of anyone running for office that they verbalize and put in writing what solutions they plan to push for and enact about school/public safety. We deserve to know before voting – and then hold their feet to the fire about it if elected – loudly. Need to get pushy media person involved – and use public forums – even letters to editor or OpEd pieces in neighborhood places.
I gave up marches and stomping feet in the 60’s as so little seemed to be happening fast enough. Many here said to get into the systems and have more impact – and people were elected that pushed for change. DC has gotten fat, lazy and old – millionaires out of touch.
Grassroots once again.
Local you can still have more/faster impact – especially if the solution are low cost.
Maybe showing up, emailing, calling offices of schools, local police, city council, mayors with alternative solutions other than guns…to protect all kids no matter of color or culture…
TX gov’s town halls have produced results and actions are starting now to be in place for next school year. Laws that now say “parents with guns must keep them locked away if children under 17yrs” are currently be rewritten to “…17 yrs and younger.” (Like 18 is any safer, sigh. A start)
Parents need to take a good hard look at their own lives., Obey laws – even stopping at stop signs when no one is around – and tell kids in cars why. Stop the name calling, ranting, road rage, explosive throwing of things when angry – far too common – even parents in schools at parent conferences. Kids know it and see it. Then do it.
You’ve seen it all in your line of work. We all have to do better.
You can have an impact with this. You can.
Here’s hoping
Just FYI. Fed. Dept of Ed is making funds available for school security – but district have to ask/apply/fill out the paper work. (Alabama tends to not have much funds available for education and slow in applying for available funds sometimes. State here is releasing $120 million to districts for school safety programs.) Some security firms/companies are offering/willing to supply metal detectors/ trained guards at no cost to districts locally. People are trying to step up. About time people got serious.
One district (we have multiple ones in the area around here) just announced they are setting up rooms for law enforcement officers in their buildings for officers to use as break rooms and to fill out paperwork – they want officers in and out of their buildings not on a schedule. Might be a good idea.
Also here there’s a new big push for mental health intervention available to parents and schools. There haven’t been enough beds available when an individual takes a sudden possibly dangerous turn/ their meds suddenly stoop working ( and this happens – one of the nephews had late set schizophrenia and someone lining the walls with tin foil because “they” are listening is not a joke to us. Resources are few, but everyone has an obligation to keep society safe from those who are a danger.) IF you can believe it or not, not long ago a CO. family committed their teenage son for observation as he was behavior bizarrely and dangerously, but the kid was able to check himself out without being evaluated ( or his parents having access to any of his records at that time) due to their patient privacy and patient rights laws. Parents were livid when they found hours later they just let him walk away because he wanted to. Last CO. legislative session that law was change.
Society coming to senses little by little
Gee, that sounds like common sense legislation. I think that was my point.
So it is happening on places.
What’s going on where you are?
Sadly it appears little gets done until tragedy hit a local area.
Proactive is so much better than reactive…and it doesn’t always cost a lot.
Grassroots have changed courses in the past.
Enough hand wringing
You are right. You can make a difference – you have done so before
And I’m getting to hate social media. Can be such a destructive force. Don’t know if you have seen
https://www.dailywire.com/news/31221/santa-fe-survivors-accused-racism-against-black-amanda-prestigiacomo?utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=053118-news&utm_campaign=position1