People distant from an event have a tendency to nationalize it. The occurrence is shoe-horned into some broader issue, or, better yet for activists, a politically opportune crisis. The shooting at Marjorie Stoneman High School would descend into the gutter of national gun-control politics. The most impactful circumstances surrounding the shooter are glazed over in the pursuit of a hot-button issue. Useful lessons are avoided as the coffers fill with contributions from any number of frightened citizens and well-heeled political exploiters (Michael Bloomberg, et al).
The most relevant facts, though, are those that directly relate to the cultprit. Right there, we find a convoluted and perplexing school discipline policy – the Promise program – in the school district, all meant to dilute the reality of bad behavior in the classroom, no matter the violator’s background. The result is a discipline system that few can understand, including the miscreant. The old rule of investing applies: if you don’t understand it, don’t do it.
The second factor to come out of the horrid affair is the insipid reactions of our public employees up and down the federal system. Take district superintendent Runcie and his use of gross and misleading numbers to defend his discipline system that in reality can’t and won’t remove real threats. Disgusting. Or the behavior of local law enforcement to refuse to enter the building to stop the shooter. Or the school’s security personnel who saw the guy coming and did nothing to stop him. Appalling. Or the warnings coming from citizens over a number of years to authorities about the shooter’s disturbing behavior. Warnings were plenty, and unheeded.
This only proves that real public safety begins with personal responsibility of the individual citizen. That’s the reason for the Second Amendment. Gun-free zones are in practice safe zones for killers.
Crass language would refer to the Parkland incident as one huge government “cluster #$&?@”. Either way you cut it, it was an entirely avoidable disaster … if government worked as designed in its flow chart. Fact is, it seldom does.
Instead, we get the parade of demagogues who promise a more centralized and bureaucratized version of the same. A good place to find them was on the stage Feb. 19, 2020, in Las Vegas.
More on Parkland can be found here:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/25/us/nikolas-cruz-warning-signs/index.html
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-ne-florida-school-shooting-fdle-day-1-story.html
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-reg-nikolas-cruz-prison-love-letters-20180327-story.html
RogerG