Youth rally as America turns gun on itself
Pity the poor unfortunate American teacher. If yet another one of Donald Trump’s mad, bad and sad ideas comes to fruition, teachers in the classroom will be obliged to carry a concealed weapon about their person.
As if the lot of the teacher isn’t burdensome enough. They are required to keep an eye out for any tell-tale signs their students may be exhibiting of abuse, violence or deprivation in the home. And they are considered somehow culpable and in the firing line if a child comes to harm or perishes on their watch, even if the child is off site at the time of harm.
In New Zealand, it’s hard to find males who want to go into teaching because it has become such a high-risk profession.
One-on-one discussions between a male teacher and a female student should be conducted with the classroom door open, or in full sight of another adult colleague, lest allegations are made by a student that the teacher may have interfered with them.
Who needs that kind of pressure and to live always under the assumption that evil predation lurks beneath the surface?
When tragedy does strike, and a child’s family runs for cover, teachers, along with overburdened social workers, can have professional and private lives besmirched by association with the child.
And pity the poor children and students, and teachers who died in the wake of the Florida high school shootings. Time was a child could go to school and josh with each other about what they were packing . . . for lunch.
Now the word ‘packing’ in American schools means weaponry.
Post this latest school shooting, students and their parents are looking to buy bullet-proof backpacks to protect them from being shot in the back, while they have the audacity to try to receive an education. How crazy is this?
While America continues to unravel what is left of its moral core, it’s left to the children to occupy the long-vacant position of home of the brave. Their articulate and heart-felt rage makes sense as they take to the streets to call for tougher gun control in a country being held at gunpoint by the National Rifle Association.
The executive vice-president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, could not bear the political headway the student marches have made. He broke his silence after the Florida shootings to attack the media, antigun campaigners and so-called political elites who ‘‘hate individual freedom’’.
LaPierre has backed the president’s idea of teaching the teachers to become armed defenders and has offered the services of the NRA to give special training. LaPierre also reiterated the utterance he made after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 when he said: ‘‘To stop a bad guy with a gun it takes a good guy with a gun.’’
The NRA head maintains that schools are wide-open targets and that ‘‘evil walks among us and God help us if we don’t protect our schools’’.
If the NRA gets its way, the gunlobbying extremist group will have managed to insert itself into the halls of learning.
No doubt it would seek to spread its influence further by sponsorship of curricular and extracurricular school activities, and will become part and parcel of the educational landscape.
One can only imagine the effects of having teachers packing concealed weapons, or the presence of retired military in the classroom. If the children of the West aren’t depressed and neurotic enough now, this will only increase their state of unease.
When former Australian prime minister John Howard bought back guns off the populace after the Port Arthur massacre, the rates of homicide and suicide dropped dramatically.
There have already been close to 20 school shootings in America so far this year and there will be more, till someone at the top stands up to the NRA and shows decent leadership. That person isn’t going to be Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, America’s enemies must be looking on with glee as they watch in disbelief as the country literally turns the gun in on itself and kills its young. Why bother to go to the trouble of planning terrorist attacks when the NRA and those on its pernicious payroll keep shooting America’s future in the foot?
While LaPierre and his mad mob fret over the second amendment and protecting outmoded parts of the US constitution, the real ammunition is in the hearts and minds of a vast majority of Americans, who desperately want gun control.
There’s a new army in town. It’s called the next generation, the only cavalry in sight who appears able and willing to come to America’s rescue and make the NRA bite its own bullet.
If the NRA gets its way, the gunlobbying extremist group will have managed to insert itself into the halls of learning.