No Guns No NRA Let Me Show You The Way

Mourners gather around one of the white crosses set up to honor the victims

I don't know everything
But there's something I do know
I've read and heard a lot
And now I'm ready to show
That we can come together
And think like one
Come together now
Live together underneath the sun
Please, please let me show you
Let me show, let me show you the way to go
Follow me, my friend
Let me show you, come on
Let me show you the way to go

Gamble and Huff
Performed by the Jacksons

This happy pop song from the 70's when Afro's we're huge, and pants were tight, might be just what some of the younger kids are saying to us right now. They are still grieving over lost friends and classmates from the Parkland massacre. Many are engulfed in trauma and are sick of the rhetoric of things from politicians that have no meaning.

Emma Gonzalez with tears and resolve said at a rally

A passionate Emily Gonzalez says, now its our turn

We're the kids you're going to read about in textbooks not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shootings, but because we are going to be the last mass shooting. Later she would go on to say MSNBC: "We are going on to talk to Congress because this is our fight now, because you messed it up so badly--- that you left it to the kids, and it's our job and you can't try and take that back from us."

These young people aren't playing around. They checked into school for what should have been a happy Valentines day full of regular class activities and sweetheart exchanges of balloons and cards. Shortly after 2 pm the terror began when an unhinged 19-year-old Nickolas Cruz, made his way on campus and began his reign of Terror. And as usual we're all shocked. Some family's lives will never be the same again. But these kids--- oh man, these surviving Parkland students who attend the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are fed up. They have had to live through a day of sheer hell, as they huddled underneath their desks and in closets speaking in low whispers and muffled cries, hearing the gunfire going off in the distance. Most of them prayed their classrooms wouldn't be next. Fourteen-year-old Lauren Hogg said,

"We got a text and it would be ---are you guys okay? Are those gunshots--- somebody just heard gunshots. What's happening?--- and then somebody else texts, somebody is coming down the hall--- there are kids screaming--- are you guys okay? and the next thing someone would text, my teacher's down.--- Things are going bad. I love you guys."

The last message Rebecca received from her daughter during the shooting

She lost 4 classmates that day. Fortunately one of them wasn't her older brother David who spoke to her and said, "Lauren something bad is going on. Hide, hide hide!" Their mom Rebecca Boldrick who was on campus that day also got a text from her reading, "CODE RED ACTIVE ALERT--- I LOVE YOU MOM." After the gunman's methodical exit, children were ushered out classrooms and into safe spaces where they reunited with parents and grieving classmates. They just clutched and held onto Valentines and to each other. Other parent's arrived to find their child was one of the 17 who didn't survive.

This was all followed up by politicians who were beholden to the NRA sounding very political. It was as though they were reading from the same script.

The things you do say:

• This is a tragic loss
• Our thoughts and prayers go out to the grieving families.
• We are looking into this issue of mental health
• We need to have a time of healing

The words you don't use

• NRA
• Guns
• Background Checks.

I think we all know it by heart. And yes, these are Republican talking points. This was all followed up

by Donald Trump pulling on a thread of information that he tried to use for his own purpose to blame the FBI for failing to do anything to stop the shooter. He tweeted a jaw dropping self absorbed tweet in an effort to shut down the Russian investigation followed by a visit to the hospital for a few cheezy photo ops with a survivor and staff. Of course the visits were to only patients who fit his election and very presidential profile. Unlike Anthony Borges, 15 who is is being hailed a hero after he was shot trying to protect his friends during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. These are the things that keep us divided as a nation. And our young people are grieving angry and sick of living like this. They live Orwellian lives of what to do on school campuses and mall areas. Rebecca Bolrick laments, "you never think it will happen to you. You see it on the news-- Oh those Sandy Hook parents, their babies are gone. You never ever, think it will be you." But these days she has consistently had talks with her teens about where to hide in case there is a public shooting. But now they are fed up with living scared and being handled by adults who do nothing. Drying her eyes and setting her jaw, Lauren Hogg continued,"All these politicians are saying, 'oh no they're not ready.' We don't need comfort, we need change. And that's the only way I know I'm going to heal.---if things change."  

Emma Gonzalez spoke out at a rally which was peppered with shouts and applause.

An over-looked student during Trumps hospital visit Anthony Borges

Every single person up here today, all these people, should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it's time for victims to be the change that we need to see. Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed but our laws have not.We certainly do not understand why it should be harder to make plans with friends on weekends than to buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. In Florida, to buy a gun you do not need a permit, you do not need a gun license, and once you buy it you do not need to register it. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy as many guns as you want at one time.

I listened in amazement to their entire speeches. They not only know what happened to them last week, but why it keeps happening. David Hogg told ABC News, "I don't care if you're a Democrat, I don't care if you're a Republican, let's work together as Americans and come to a compromise because in politics no one side ever wins. It's always through compromise that change ever happens."

David Hogg with his sister Lauren speaking on the attack 

I know it sounds hoaky to say these young people are wise beyond their years, but I think that comes from paying attention and really seeing what's happening. When we allow the powers that be, to govern, and talk from the same old playbook, more children and adults (like some of their teachers) will definitely die. To continue to keep putting the issue of guns aside and say ineffective things like mental health is the cause, while big mouth commentators like Rush Limbaugh denounce the students for wanting to march in protest makes sure that we're sealing the fate of another generation.  

David Hogg knocks it out of the ballpark as he speaks to Martha Raddatz. "I don't want anybody just saying, I'm so sorry. I want you getting out there. I want people doing things about this. If you can't do something about this then get out of office."

Today on President's Day, much to the chagrin of right wing pundits, Donald Trump, the NRA and hard bitten 2nd amendment lovers, the young people and their supporters came to the Capital to protest this tragedy. They are are speaking, walking, protesting and clearly in my opinion, showing us the way to go.

Sources

CNN

MSNBC

ABC News

Raw Story.com

Previous Blog

They Fiddle And Another Child Dies

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