They Fiddle and Another Child Dies

Oh, once upon a time in Arkansas,

An old man sat in his little cabin door
And fiddled at a tune that he liked to hear,
A jolly old tune that he played by ear.
It was raining hard, but the fiddler didn't care,
He sawed away at the popular air,
Tho' his roof tree leaked like a waterfall,
That didn't seem to bother the man at all.

A traveler was riding by that day,
And stopped to hear him a-practicing away;
The cabin was a-float and his feet were wet,
But still the old man didn't seem to fret.
So the stranger said "Now the way it seems to me,
You'd better mend your roof," said he.
But the old man said as he played away,
"I couldn't mend it now, it's a rainy day."

The traveler replied, "That's all quite true,
But this, I think, is the thing to do;
Get busy on a day that is fair and bright,
Then patch the old roof till it's good and tight."
But the old man kept on a-playing at his reel,
And tapped the ground with his leathery heel.
"Get along," said he, "for you give me a pain;
My cabin never leaks when it doesn't rain."

This old song takes me back to my childhood when my grade school teacher read the lyrics to us. She smiled as she read, and we heard the absurd words of a man who fiddled away while water came into his cabin on a rainy day. He rebuffed a man who told him that he should repair the leak when the rain stopped. He couldn't repair the roof while it rained and wouldn't repair it when it didn't rain. That reading of a childhood song came back to me when a school board city Commissioner from the district in Florida said, "Right now is the wrong time to be discussing gun laws." I heard the words and I was triggered with the image of an old guy just fiddling away. My frustration continued to rise partly because it's what has been said repeatedly from Donald Trump and others who refuse to take action about guns and gun laws which continue to leave people vulnerable.

Children came to school with the happy anticipation of exchanging valentines with friends and classmates. After a deranged gun obsessed 19-year-old young man entered the school and took 17 lives, the children exited the school in shock and horror clutching those valentines, which may symbolized a day of horror for them when they lost a friend. Some of the children ran into the arms of shaken parents who sobbed and held onto them with relief. And the nation looks at this mess and this carnage, and an unpatched roof of protection for it's citizens and we still cry out "Fix it!"

Lori Alhadeff a mother of a dead child screams at the President and Congress to fix the roof!

 Lori Alhadeff

“How? How do we allow a gunman to come into our children’s school? How do they get through security? What security is there? There’s no metal detectors. The gunman, a crazy person, just walks right into the school, knocks on the window of my child’s door and starts shooting, shooting her and killing her! President Trump, you say what can you do? You can stop the guns from getting into these children’s hands! Put metal detectors at every entrance to the schools. What can you do? You can do a lot! This is not fair to our families and our children go to school and have to get killed! I just spent the last two hours putting the burial arrangements for my daughters funeral, who is 14! Fourteen! President Trump, please do something! Do something. Action! We need it now! These kids need now!” Victim's mother: President Trump please do something!

But they fiddle in the sunshine. Something could have happened between here and the last mass

Mitch McConnell on Twitter

shooting when 26 people were killed at First Baptist Church in rural Sutherland Springs, Texas authorities said. The shooter fled and was pursued by a resident and police but was found dead after running his car off the road. Law enforcement officials identified the alleged gunman as Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, of neighboring Comal County, Texas. That was followed by the Las Vegas killing which claimed 58 lives. But it appears they fiddle in the sunshine of their politics, and their own scandals.They're not prepared to take on this problem because in truth many of them have had their campaigns funded by the NRA. They win and fiddle, and fiddle more. The killings happen and the tragedy, blood, and tears come. And all America gets for its heartache are platitudes and prayer talk. No action happens, just more fiddling.

Donald Trump warned the people that his opponent wanted to take their guns away, and maybe something should be done about that. He proclaimed that if he was elected he would protect their second amendment rights to bear arms. Trump claimed it was the Mexicans who were bringing guns and crime into this county, and so he wanted to build a wall. He rolled back the former Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun. What was Mr. Trump's thinking? He blindly fiddled and proclaimed, "I inherited a mess from the former administration." That in my opinion isn't even debate worthy.

I grew up in a home with a father who owned 3 hand guns. I rarely saw them and never touched them. I handled an M-16 when I was in the military, but never had the drive or desire to have weapons in my home as an adult. Even now the argument is being made for having these armor piercing guns is that if we out-law them, that will create a demand for them. And my answer is so what? Are we a nation of children that should have any and everything it desires? That is a lame excuse for the lobbyists and pro-gun crowd to threaten Americans with the fear of lawlessness and cave in to groups who control the purse strings. An AR-15 is a weapon of human destruction designed for foreign wars. And yet it's being used right here in our schools against our children and others. True to their word in 2013 President Obama's words fell on deaf ears when the Republican Congress swore to sit on any Obama proposed legislation, refused to pass a competent bill on background checks. They fiddled after beautiful children from both Sandy Hook and Newton were cut down by senseless gun violence.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," said Barack Obama about the victims of the

President Barack Obama

Sandy Hook massacre as he introduced new gun laws in America in January 2016.
In 2015 he told BBC that his failure to pass "common sense gun laws" in the US was the greatest frustration of his presidency.
His attempts to change the laws have always been blocked by the Republicans. Usually a composed man this president was outraged at Republicans as he kicked at the door exiting the press briefing.

A very angry and animated John Lewis, the face of civil rights in America, and Representative from the state of Georgia faced off with Steven Mnunch (Secretary of the Treasury) as to whether there was a budget to deal with the proliferation of gun violence. Mnunch responded with stutters and stammers, claiming it was not in his lane. Taken aback Lewis looked at him with the stare of a bull who might charge any moment stating, 

Iconic Civil Rights leader John Lewis

"You're part of this administration and we're losing hundreds of thousands of people. Young children in school trying to get an education and they're murdered. Teachers--- A football coach! And you're saying to me who represents the people in Georgia, the city of Atlanta where we have the CDC ---and someone in this government told the CDC the end of study of gun violence. We can do better we must do better we have to save our children, our citizens, our teachers!"

Now the Treasury Secretary promised to speak with Trump and John Lewis ended it on a civil note. But I'll say it if you're not thinking it. Even if Mnuchin makes a guttural sound about guns or gun safety, I expect more fiddling from him. A few weeks will have passed and if one person dares to utter from the press about Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the killer, or any of those lives lost, he will say something through Sarah Huckabee Sanders like, "Get along, for you give me a pain my cabin never leaks when it doesn't rain."

Victims of the February 14th Valentines Day Tragedy