Notice that the guys protecting Oscar attendees are armed with more then pink knit caps and peace signs. They are not using tie-dye or Che tee shirts to provide security for Hollywood elites.
Provocateur’s success depends on their ability to tap into emotions. Can’t think of a more emotional reason to march then to preserve young lives. Hence, title a movement, “March For Our Lives”. Well-meaning or not, exaggerating a threat while exploiting children and giving kids national notoriety does not a solution make. It’s the trifecta of exploitation.
Problem solvers on the other hand are able to look at a problem in a dispassionate way. Thus they solve problems. A good example of these differences can be found when we look at how the preservation of innocent life is dealt with depending on the instruments of death. The two approaches differ in their treatment of one particular inanimate object. How about we look at bicycles, pools, cell phones, automobiles, motorcycles and knives since they are treated differently then guns? Without human direction none of these inanimate objects will kill anyone.
Eight hundred and forty people died on bicycles in 2016. More then 3,800 drown in pools. Eleven people die while texting behind the wheel every day. Motor vehicle fatalities exceed 30,000. About 4,000 a year die on motorcycles. People use knives to kill about 1,600 annually. People using rifles killed about 374 people in 2016.
There are more then fifty-million kids in public K-12 schools and five million in private. Since 2012, 138 kids have been killed in schools at all levels. Every murder of a child is a horrific crime. The chances of a kid being killed in school are less than 23/55,000,000 per year on average. Kids are far safer in school then in cars, pools, on bikes of either variety or in the kitchen for that matter.
A problem solver would conclude that being in a car, texting, swimming, riding a bike or being around knives is more dangerous. He or she would be as repulsed and sad about school shootings as the provocateur but not uniquely distracted by gun crimes. Nor would a problem solver use kids as props to promote a political agenda.
Hundreds of thousands marched for their lives demanding that the minimum age to buy a rifle be raised to 21, while ignoring far larger dangers. The use of cell phones, swimming pools, knives, motorcycles and age for a driver’s license is not on the marcher’s agenda.
If the only objective was to save lives, we’d limit cell phone use to those over 21, raise the driver’s license privilege to at least 21, lower the speed limit, stop employing light-weight materials in the manufacture of cars and insist kids under 21 be supervised by trained adults at pools and on the beach. You get the idea.
The very thought of a gun removes rational thought for way too many people. My proof? A rational solution to school shootings is crystal clear and requires no marches nor expletives directed at the NRA by cursing teens who have never been taught manners. But it does involve well-trained law abiding people carrying guns. Hence those focused on gun control have been rendered clueless.
Unemotional school boards filled with problem solvers will put in place programs to protect the kids in their districts, while boards inspired by provocateurs will demand recycling past failed policy.
It was the Washington Post “fact checkers”, not a place filled with NRA members, that concluded none of the proposed legislation would have prevented any of the mass (three or more killed) school shootings to date. Only an irrational rejection of guns can account for the anti-gun hysteria that has swept up millions and energized mainstream media.
Just the other day a well-educated writer/editor emailed me that we need to pass legislation banning “automatic weapons”. When I informed him that they have been banned since 1986, I heard crickets. As Roseanne Roseannadanna might have said, “never mind”. The facts and statistics aside, schools can be made even safer with no new federal legislation or waste of money organizing hundreds of thousands of people to hit the streets emoting.
School boards can choose to allow well-trained teachers, administrators and district employees to carry concealed weapons. Local police would be notified so as to avoid any confusion should an incident occur. The mere possibility that one or fifteen teachers carry a gun in a school would act as a huge deterrent. The disappearance of school “gun free zones” is the best protection “for our lives.”
No need to debate this point. Over time we will see where mass shootings occur and where they don’t occur. Will our kids be better protected by good guys with guns or laws written down and assigned code numbers? I suspect the problem solvers that end the “gun free zones” in their schools will best protect children.
Cautionary note:anti-gun hysteria that has proven ineffective in reducing violent crime has been the number one driver of gun sales over the last 9 years. Obama’s rhetoric and now that of hysterical impolite kids has resulted in a surge in gun sales. As is so often the case, left-wing tactics render results they don’t want or anticipate.The NRA should send thank-you notes to march organizers.