And the Children Shall Lead Them...

I saw this post today, this morning, on Facebook. The parent of one of the children, one of the students in Parkland, Florida posted this letter.

Lenny Kaufman
February 20 at 7:54pm ·

As many of you know, my daughter Sari is a sophomore at Stoneman Douglas in Parkland. She wrote the letter below and has sent it to many government officials. She has asked me to share her message with as many people as possibe. Please feel free to re-post and share on your own timeline.

Hello, my name is Sari Kaufman and I attend Stoneman Douglas. I am a sophomore and I am a survivor of the 2/14 attack. 

The morning of the attack seemed like a normal day. The weather was very nice and I was excited to receive carnations for Valentines Day. Sadly, this all changed at the sound of a routine fire drill. 

I remember leaving my classroom at 2:22 pm. This was the second fire drill of the day so it seemed abnormal. Once I went outside I heard five consistent noises that sounded like gunshots but my mind did not let me accept the fact that it were sounds that caused 17 lives to be lost. My memory from this day is a little vague but I remember my teacher saying this is not a drill. 

We ran behind a fence and made sure we did not fall in a canal while we were running for our lives. There was so much confusion and we did not know what was going on. The only clear thing I remember which made me feel at ease was when a police officer protected us and helped us to safety. I was able to run to a nearby restaurant and watch the unthinkable news story develop in my 5th period classroom. 

Unfortunately, some of my friends are not able to share their story today. 

My city and school will be forever changed and even some of my closest friends are forever changed due to this traumatizing event that has affected them, not just physically, but also mentally/emotionally. I have had to go to funerals and watch parents bury their 14 year old sons and daughters. 

Following the attack, I wanted to talk to the news right away, but at the same time, I first wanted to understand the gun control debate a little more in-depth. Now, after a few days and after this traumatizing event is not feeling like a dream anymore and the fact that we lost 17 people including coaches, teachers, administrators, and classmates, I want to make a change. 

In November, I researched about the NICS (the gun database background check system) and about universal gun background checks for the November Public Forum debate topic. I remember finding many flaws in our system. For example, according to “The Trace” in 2015, the NICS Improvement Amendment Act was introduced in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. The legislation gave more than a billion dollars in grants to states and territories to improve record keeping systems and reportings to NICS. This seemed like a very common sense and great way to fix a robust system. 

However, since the bill became law, Congress has given out only 11.5 percent of that money for spending. Former Congressman James Moran explains the reason behind this. He says that the NRA worked with allies in Congress to cut off funding for these grants when the committee put each year’s budget together (July 27th, 2015). 

Unfortunately, this was a very common theme and each article I read had a recurring conclusion. It is either that the proposed bill never passes Congress due to backlash from other funding parties, or in some cases, a bill passes but Congress does not put the money where it is supposed to go due to influential organizations like the NRA.

Therefore, do I think that my friends and I protesting for a change is going to change your mind? No. But maybe real facts, research, and uniting politicians together to save lives at school will lead to a change. 

I am only 15 years old but I understand that politics are extremely complicated. However, I believe that we can fix these issues in our systems so other kids do not have to go through the same trauma I have gone through. I hope that the next time that you (government leaders) make a deal or receive money which hinders your judgment, just remember kids having their blood spilled out on classroom floors.

Also, remember that your community might be next. 

Please do not wait and just be sad for a couple of days that 17 people died and please do not think American lives are disposable. Let this shooting be the last school shooting. Do not wait until it is too late, until it happens in your community, to your daughter or son, or your friends. 

Act now. 

There is so much we can accomplish in this revolution, even if it will take several small steps. For example, after Sandy Hook, Connecticut required information on mental health records available to federal and state agencies while performing background checks. According to Giffords Law Center, federal law cannot require states to make information identifying these people available to the federal or state agencies that perform background checks, and many states fail to voluntarily report the necessary records to the FBI’s NICS. So instead of just letting Connecticut be alone and do this because they were affected, let's motivate every single state to do this on a federal level. 

I want to be optimistic about these political changes but the sad fact is that in only my 15 years of existence there have been more school shootings than someone who lived from 1910 to 1980. There is a repetitive pattern that has a very similar dialogue: Another shooting, let's improve our system, let's unite and worry about the people on each side of the political aisle. 

Children's lives are more important than our political differences. 

Let’s do something about our flawed system. Following this, very little is ever accomplished. Words are very different than actions. I want to be optimistic but the truth is I am very pessimistic about new political changes. How is this generation going to have faith in our system if time and time again it fails to protect our lives? Every day in school we learn how great the United States is, yet we are one of the only countries in the world to have classmates die in the very place we learn. There could have been so much to prevent this horrible tragedy. I am just asking for a change no matter what it is. I just want our system to improve to save lives. I hope we unite across political parties to protect my friends and future generations to be safe in school.

Best,

Sari Kaufman
Age 15

Tom Tomorrow nails it--of course--on guns

Not that they'll get it.

So many truths here about guns

Click on picture for easier viewing and reading

Quote of the day--on America and our guns

"On gun violence and how to end it, the facts are all in, the evidence is clear, the truth there for all who care to know it—indeed, a global consensus is in place, which, in disbelief and now in disgust, the planet waits for us to us to join. Those who fight against gun control, actively or passively, with a shrug of helplessness, are dooming more kids to horrible deaths and more parents to unspeakable grief just as surely as are those who fight against pediatric medicine or childhood vaccination. It’s really, and inarguably, just as simple as that."

--Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker Magazine, "The Simple Truth About Gun Control"

Link to orginal post:   http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/the-simple-truth-about-gun-control.html#ixzz2Fv7oyvYR

A comparison: The US and the rest of the world, Pt. I

America: Living by the sword, dying by the sword

The NRA's--and America's?--response to one more weapons slaughter

Gun laws in the US?

I've written, time and again, about our looney gun culture and our obsession with them and the shootings we end up with.

For more information on the subject, and in a rare case of re-posting, I put up the following, from Bill Mann and The Huffington Post, today:

Fort Hood Reminds Us: Our Gun Laws Are a National Disgrace

Our current lack of health insurance for all is a national disgrace. But so are our handgun laws -- or lack of them.

You'd think you might have heard a bit more about our heedless national pistolero mentality in the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood this week. But no such luck. How many times have we seen this movie before? It's only the locations that change.

There was only scant mention in all the coverage that suspected mass murderer Nidal Hasan had bought his lethal cop-killer handgun at "Guns Galore" in nearby Killeen, Texas. How charming.

Why is it that comic Stephen Colbert seems to be the only one on national TV who regularly reminds us about this country's twisted love of handguns? (Colbert keeps his piece, "Sweetness," under his anchor desk, occasionally taking it out to smooch its barrel).

Something I've written in my newspaper columns about for years bears repeating here:

Any country with as many mentally ill people as the U.S. that allows virtually unlimited access to handguns is on a suicide mission.

Gun sickness is our most pressing national illness.

I live within sight of the Canadian border, and Americans who visit Canada are often surprised at how serious Canadian customs officials regard guns -- specifically, bringing them into relatively handgun-free Canada. Where are these people's priorities, they seem to be saying?

(Note: Canadian customs can -- and does -- turn people back at the border who have a DUI conviction. Again, different national priorities).

Canadians recognize handguns as a direct threat to civilized society, unlike here, where the NRA and the gun-toters evidently believe we're living in Tombstone, Ariz., circa 1885.

How many more mass shootings and troubled-loner gun sprees (what the New York Post calls "Slayfests") can we afford before we finally get serious about gun control? How much longer will network TV news continue to soft-peddle and play down this most basic issue?

I don't really care that much about what drove Hasan to apparently murder all those soldiers, which has been the prime focus of nonstop cable news. The fact is, he did. What I DO care about is how easy it was for him to get the means -- a lethal gun -- to do it.

Not to belabor the Canadian issue -- we Americans are, after all, the noisy, gun-toting downstairs neighbors -- but re-entering the U.S. after living in Canada for several years (which we did) was a maddening experience.

We lived a major metropolitan area, Montreal, for seven years. And even in the more disadvantaged parts of that city, you feel safe. You never feel you might get shot, either by a handgun-toting robber or a troubled loner.

Coming back into the United States you lose that peace of mind. It's like a slap in the face.

Don't believe me? Ask anyone else who's lived in a developed country in which handguns are restricted and can't be bought as easily as cigarettes.

We have millions of sick Americans who need health insurance. But there are even more of us who live in danger of being shot by an easy-to-obtain weapon. It's way past time for the media to pay attention to THIS life and death issue.
____________________

Great writing, Mr. Mann. Thank you for the logic, information and unimpassioned input.

(Side note to "Top of the Chain": We don't agree on this issue. You know it. I know it. I appreciate your reasonably calm writing but let's not go on about this. Let's agree to disagree. Thank you for reading, absolutely. In the meantime, several more people were shot and killed this weekend in Kansas City alone, on top of the Fort Hood slaughter and the shooting in Orlando last week).