The hostage crisis goes on. Not the ones in Mali and Algeria;
those have ended awfully. I refer to the President and all his
friends in the Senate holding innocent children hostage
in their quest for the moral high ground on gun violence.
The President put on a typical D.C. dog-and-pony show last week
to announce his new initiatives on firearms. He surrounded himself
on the stage with lovely young boys and girls, who were no doubt
thrilled to enjoy such a privilege. They were being praised for
writing letters to the White House asking for the President to save
their lives from bad guys. No one could possibly fault them for
doing something so sweet and innocent.
Instead of educating those youngsters that there are different
ideas about how their safety can best be preserved, the man to whom
we entrusted the safety of the free world chose to pander.
Essentially he endorsed them as major policy geniuses who had
eclipsed their tender years by penetrating through all the humbug
and arriving at the master plan: take guns away from ordinary
citizens.
Nobody explained to those children that on the very same day as
the Newtown shooting, a deranged slasher attacked a public school
in China, stabbing 22 kids. Not only that, there has been a series
of such attacks in Chinese schools over the past several years. It
turns out that taking one weapon away is not a guarantee of
security for students against overwrought attackers.
By putting those children out front, the President essentially
co-opted them to his cause. He sent a message to the country that
people who support his measures are gentle folks who love children.
Those who oppose his approach do not care about the welfare of our
youth.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Gun owners as a class
do not have fewer children than gun control types. They do not
invest less time and money and energy in their children. In fact, I
would love to see someone do an experiment. Take the NRA mailing
list and send them a solicitation to donate to Joe DiMaggio
Children’s Hospital, then do the same for a list of equal size
populated with gun control activists. The results might be
instructive.
Furthermore, many well-intentioned individuals studying the
question of child safety believe that trying to achieve that by gun
control is a chimera, but using armed guards is feasible. The first
approach calls for removing several billion weapons in a country
that has never been able to control drugs or human beings from
crossing its borders. It hopes that police far away will be called
and will arrive in time to enter a scene from the outside to take
control. The second approach calls for a teacher or principal or
security guard, some nice decent person, to be equipped to defend
from the inside. Sounds much more doable to a simple layman like
myself.
Now the Vice President, Senator Feinstein, and others have
picked up the ball to push their major gun initiative forward,
always citing the children as the ones asking for their safety to
be guaranteed in this way.
During the 1996 Presidential election, the Town Hall debate
began with a teacher saying to Bob Dole, “We can learn so much from
our children. What would you answer to a 6-year-old in my class who
asked…?” At that moment, my heart sank in genuine despair. We send
teachers into classes with youngsters age 6 and they are going
there to learn from the kids? We then pass the word along to the
leaders of the country so they know how to govern? Seventeen years
later, my worst fears have been confirmed.
How about if we send all the kids back to class and we teach
them true history from true textbooks? How about if we teach them
how to think and how not to be gulled by surface impressions? How
about the adults get together and debate policy using adult-level
education and mature intelligence?
Here is my plan. Let’s discuss these issues in depth and with
real evidence. Only adults in the room. Parental guidance
suggested.
