While I can understand their grief and the desperate wish to do something about this attack, their chant will fall on deaf ears. Who these teenagers are in reality chanting to are those who will never bow to the wishes of others: criminals and whack jobs that kill for whatever reason.
These chants are pathetic and useless. Since man crawled out of the ooze, there have been those who will kill others. It is just the way of humans, always was and always will be. It is just the chants against this that is relatively new. These chants worked to sway public opinion in the Vietnam War, and they worked reasonably well in the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King.
But the reason these recent chants worked, was that the message was aimed at a civil society. Public opinion was eventually changed, and our way of doing things regarding these two events was redirected.
Not so with chanting for criminals and whack jobs to change their behavior: they are not civilized, nor do they succumb to public pressure. Gangs in Chicago murder people willy nilly, and the loved ones of the victims chant 'no more murders.'
Fat chance that the murdering scumbags will hear those voices. They just don't give a damn about who they murder, or what happens to those left behind.
Did we hear chants from the citizens within walled cities a thousand years ago, decrying Ghengis Khan from ransacking their society, 'no more seiges!' No, nobody chanted for that. Would Ghengis have listened to these chants? Right.
Did we hear the residents of London after Nazi bombing raids destroyed their neighborhoods chanting 'no more bombing raids!' No, no chanting for anything like that. Would Hitler hear these chants and stand down? Nothing could be further from reality.
And we heard no such chanting historically for good reason: the only way to stop people who want to kill you is to kill them first. That is the only way, and this is not even arguable. It was well understood by everybody back in the day.
So it must be today as well. As Wayne LaPierre of the NRA pointed out with God's truth: 'the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.' Period.
Scumbag murderers almost always choose soft targets, poorly defended populations for their mayhem. Harden these targets by arming the good guys among them. For a population of every 50 unarmed folk, arm a guard. In a school of the size of the Parkland high school of 3,000 enrollment, 60 armed personnel would essentially harden this target to the point that no scumbag would choose this for their atrocities.
We can argue about the ratio of armed good guys to unarmed citizens, but this is the way to do it. And don't point out to the bad guys who is armed and who isn't by slapping a uniform and badge on them with an exposed side arm or shouldered rifle; concealed carry is the way to do this. Once a bad guy starts shooting, he can count on somebody shooting back in short order, but will not have any idea of where the return fire will come from.
This is the only way. Gun control is a fool's errand. There are 300,000,000 guns in the U.S. Outlawing guns is simply going to take away guns from law abiding folk, leaving the outlaws armed, since outlaws by definition do not obey the law.
No more chanting, just arm more good guys.
.jpg)
