Students returned to class at Stoneman Douglas High School for the first time since a former student killed 17 in a mass shooting. (AP Photo/Terry Renna)
Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 3/2/18
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It is not possible, in the time and space that we have, to fully detail the cascade of government failures that led to the horrific mass murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
We know that Scot Peterson, the Broward County sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school, cowered outside the building even as 19-year old Nikolas Cruz was on a rampage of death inside. Peterson resigned from the department.
We know that three other sheriff’s deputies were also on the scene and that all three of them remained outside the school as well. Can you just imagine the heartbreak and the sleepless nights of the parents and families of those slain? There were four sworn peace officers on the scene that very plausibly could have interdicted in a way that saved lives. Yet they did nothing.
In the wake of the resulting outrage, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is hiding behind a blizzard of words about “following established procedure” and other such bureaucratic claptrap. But that doesn’t change the fact that four duly sworn law enforcement officers –men who carry guns so that according to liberal anti-gun orthodoxy we mere citizens don’t need to – sat outside and did nothing as innocents inside were slaughtered.
But wait, it actually gets worse.
What’s now coming to light is that the Broward County school district was made into a liberal feel-good social engineering project of the Obama administration. In an effort to curtail the so-called, “school-to-prison pipeline,” – a sophism that springs from the spurious belief that school kids come to the attention of the police due to their ethnicity rather than for having actually committed crimes — the district stopped referring students to police for a long list of infractions, many of them serious and violent. As a result, the district’s campus crime statistics improved dramatically.
‘Success!’ hailed President Obama. Let the federal grant money flow!
Meanwhile, there was no actual reduction in campus crime. In fact, the kids did what kids do. They figured out that the heat was off.
Thus Nikolas Cruz began ramping up to the point of committing mass murder. He was involved in a felony assault on campus in January 2017 – more than a year before he shot up the school. But, under the oh-so-politically correct policy in place, he wasn’t arrested.
Among the many obvious problems with this is the fact that had he been arrested, he probably wouldn’t have been able to purchase the gun that he used to kill 17 people.
Will we ever learn? Every time liberal bureaucrats and politicians engage in the kind of social engineering that defies common sense, it ends in tears.
Yet those on the left never stop telling us that the expansion of government is the answer – the only answer – to the challenges that face our society.
As conservative columnist William F. Marshall says, our problem is not guns. It’s the false expectation that government will take care of us.
Having spent over 30 years in Texas public education, I witnessed terrible decisions by government at all levels. The Federal Government has NO business being involved with local education or state level education. The Fed’s got overly involved in areas where they did not use common sense. Our Texas Education Agency has been a “case study” in stupidity and ignorance since at least the 1980’s. The statement from Mr. Marshall hits the nail on the head. We also need to address the lack of parenting, the lack of teaching of morals, civil responsibility, patriotism, etc. We must address illegal drug use, addiction to violence regarding tv, movies, etc., AND THEN let’s not forget people totally absorbed in their cell phones, etc. And finally, let us get our society back to The Bible and God. I know much of my statement is politically incorrect, but truth is truth. Thanks for the forum Paul.
We live in a society that tolerates all things and then is astonished when some things, bad things, happen. Guns are not the problem. Guns were no problem back when we were a different people. We have changed. And not for the better. The things that need to be done, the things we should return to, the things J. Lester mentions, none of that will happen. In the end, a few dead kids is a small price to pay for the kind of dissolute culture too many cherish.
Thank you for your informative articles I enjoy reading them every time they come into my email box.
And now Trump too?
He says “take away the guns THEN Due Process???”
A statement with which I could not possibly disagree more.
Ditto!
Trump’s losing it. This tariff riff is spooking markets worldwide.
No one seems to want to admit they DROPPED THE BALL big time. This is what happens when liberals are put in charge. Liberals have a LONG HISTORY of denying ownership of their failures, always placing blame on someone or something else. Case in point…it wasn’t the years of failure of the Broward County Sheriff’s department to act on the many calls about Cruz or the FBI’s failure to act on something they should have taken seriously and acted on immediately. No, it wasn’t this. It was GUNS. Which has been in the liberal crosshairs for a very long time. The liberals take NO SHAME in using the deaths at this school as liberal fodder for their cause. Which is to strip American Citizens of their God given right to own firearms, which is enforced by the Second Amendment.
The break down of schools in general can be put squarely in the lap of the liberals who have worked day and night to undermine the parental authority and teacher’s control in the classroom. Liberals have worked tirelessly to take GOD out of our classrooms. Liberals have worked tirelessly to install liberal teachers to indoctrinate children to the liberal agenda. THIS, my friends, is what happens when liberals are in charge…tragedy after tragedy with no one taking responsibility for their part in the tragedies.
The Liberal/Marxist/Nazi/Communist answer to the Societal and Cultural problems is more (actually ultimate) government authority over ALL human activity from cradle to grave including (but not limited to) education, health, lifestyle, wealth, finance, religion, information (news-opinion), science, and families, to name a few. The reason that they (the above Leftists) don’t use ANY common sense founded on God-given unalienable rights (our Constitution) to solve any evils in our society is because they believe that all issues that we cherish (such as self defense) are a threat to their totalitarian goals.
Therefore, the Left’s propaganda machine (Democrat owned Media) will seize on any issue caused by evil in our society to demand even less freedom (the “real problem”) in order to “solve” that issue. Of course, it doesn’t work. However, that doesn’t matter because they want the turmoil to be exasperated in order to further their call for even greater government control over our lives at the expense of our freedoms. This is what they wanted in the first place. Their FAKE concern about murder in schools (actually due to their deliberate incompetence in government responsibility) is meant to deceive normal people. ANY attempt on the Conservative’s part to reach a compromise, a so-called “comprehensive agreement” with the Left (I hate that term – comprehensive), is doomed to never satisfy them. It only whets their appetite for more totalitarian control. Why do we not aggressively expose their ultimate goals in order to DEFEAT their stupid arguments?
Paul, here is a short (7.5 minute video) of a magnificent speech by Virginia Delegate Nick Freitas that was delivered to the Virginia House of Delegates last Friday that discusses the topic of your post with similar persuasion and clarity. I was in absolute awe of the truth that he spoke. He was discussing the importance of the Second Amendment and this video has now has been viewed over 14 million times.
https://www.facebook.com/NickFreitasVA/videos/1575471789187997/
Nick joined the Army after high school and following 9/11, he volunteered for the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets), and served 2 combat tours in Iraq. May we be blessed with more patriots like this man.