Conservatives’ solution for Gun Violence is School Militarization, and Michael Moore’s last words

By Robert A. Vella

The insanity of America grows worse.  Faced with the embarrassing choice between an epidemic of mass shootings which are endangering the lives of their children, and the mounting pressure to enact gun control laws, conservatives – true to their authoritarian nature – are resorting to the militarization of the nation’s schools as an ultimate solution.

Seriously folks, conservatives would rather turn America’s schools into police-state prisons than allow even a modicum of sensible gun control measures.  If that isn’t insanity, I surely don’t know what is.

From ThinkProgress – How Indiana Is Tackling Mass Shootings Without Gun Control:

The safety standards [Mason] Wooldridge [co-founder of Our Kids Deserve It, a group that works to promote what many might consider aggressive school safety standards] is working to implement in Indiana schools are no ordinary measures. [clarification added by TSJ]

They’ve already been implemented at Southwestern High School, a small school in rural Shelbyville. There, not only do children perform “active shooter drills” alongside fire drills, teachers wear special key fobs that alert police faster than a 911 call. Classrooms have “hardened doors” that lock automatically and “hardened exterior glass” windows to deflect both bullets and brute force. Cameras in the school have “shooter detection technology” — tools created for the military — to help law enforcement more quickly locate suspects. And if the suspect is trapped in the hallway, smoke cannisters can be detonated to slow down the shooter.

Wooldridge thinks these measures could have prevented the deadly outcomes of shootings like Sandy Hook and last week’s incident at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

I ask you, dear readers, what kind of adults will result from raising children in such an oppressive environment?

To lend credence to my claim that America is fast becoming a country of crazy people, consider activist Michael Moore’s prophetic last words on the subject of gun violence made last year.

From the Daily Kos – Michael Moore: The NRA’s Got It Half-Right – ‘Guns Don’t Kill People…’:

With due respect to those who are asking me to comment on last night’s tragic mass shooting at UCSB in Isla Vista, CA — I no longer have anything to say about what is now part of normal American life. Everything I have to say about this, I said it 12 years ago:

We are a people easily manipulated by fear which causes us to arm ourselves with a quarter BILLION guns in our homes that are often easily accessible to young people, burglars, the mentally ill and anyone who momentarily snaps. We are a nation founded in violence, grew our borders through violence, and allow men in power to use violence around the world to further our so-called American (corporate) “interests.” The gun, not the eagle, is our true national symbol.

While other countries have more violent pasts (Germany, Japan), more guns per capita in their homes (Canada [mostly hunting guns), and the kids in most other countries watch the same violent movies and play the same violent video games that our kids play, no one even comes close to killing as many of its own citizens on a daily basis as we do — and yet we don’t seem to want to ask ourselves this simple question: “Why us? What is it about US?”

Nearly all of our mass shootings are by angry or disturbed white males. None of them are committed by the majority gender, women. Hmmm, why is that?

Even when 90% of the American public calls for stronger gun laws, Congress refuses — and then we the people refuse to remove them from office.

So the onus is on us, all of us. We won’t pass the necessary laws, but more importantly we won’t consider why this happens here all the time. When the NRA says, “Guns don’t kill people — people kill people,” they’ve got it half-right. Except I would amend it to this: “Guns don’t kill people — Americans kill people.” Enjoy the rest of your day, and rest assured this will all happen again very soon.