If prayer was actually meaningful, white men in this country would do whatever they could to make it illegal among women, non-white people and especially those of lower-income. And it’s ironic, the most religious people I have observed are women, non-white people and those of lower-income.
There was another school shooting on Wednesday. This time it was at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. You know eventually, a good school district is going to brag how they’ve never had an active shooter issue. It sounds crazy but I believe if we don’t put a stop to it with effective measures very soon, it will become a thing people research good school districts.
Around here, some of the school district have faculty/staff that are armed or have access to firearms. And they have redesigned their schools to make sure there’s only one way in and one way out. Sounds like a prison to me. I know people used to get pissed off at hall monitors or hall passes.
Believe it or not, there was a time in which you could enter a school building during school hours and no one would really bother you as you were member of the community. Now, it’s like going to visitor’s day at San Quentin. You have to buzzed to be let in, pass through a metal detector and have to have a visitor tag. And these are schools in the suburbs and the rural America, aka the Heartland. But since we don’t have the technology, we can rest assured they’ll be no ED 209s patrolling the halls…yet.
That’s not the saying the SROs who are currently any better. They’re more aggressive to students. Just Google videos online. At one of the schools I covered, the SRO had sex with one of the students. That was one court document case I didn’t really like hearing because of the description of their intercourse. He was charged with second-degree rape and kicked off the force. But it’s crazy how we even have school districts who have their own police force.
Some people would say we need to bring back corporal punishment, but if you need to beat a child with a wooden board, you probably shouldn’t be in education in the first place. What’s fucked up is that if your work supervisor hits you for a mistake you made at work, you could sue the company and have them arrested. And most kids are or were being paddled for mistakes which can be handled by more professionals who should know how to deal with it.
Corporal punishment takes education and centralizes it around the faculty/staff instead of around the students. A teacher and administrator can’t deal with effective ways to curb a child’s behavior, so they hit them and use the embarrassment of being assaulted. I’ll admit there are some bad kids out there but a lot of it is because they are given too much leeway by others. I seriously doubt an administrator would paddle a jock or preppie. So they target the non-white and lower-income students while the jocks and preppies get off.
And I’m not dogging on all educators. Their hands are tied by the bureaucracy and statistics being used by politicians. A good educator knows how to handle a classroom of two dozen students five or six times a day. Sadly in the olden days, it was just a warehouse for kids. My mom was telling my uncle who’s older than her wanted to leave school at 16 as all the other kids did. But my grandfather who never got above a fourth grade education offered to give my uncle some of the farm land if he graduated.
So guess what? He stuck it out and graduated from high school. And he got a scholarship to a college. Then, he went and joined the Air Force, did his military service and then came back to work for the phone company, retiring in his mid-50s with a nice retirement package. As now, this is something schools are trying to end with students dropping out at 16 as the state law allows, it’s hard for educators to convince some students, and especially their parents, why they need to at least get a high school education.
College isn’t for everyone, but a lot of people can go to vo-tech schools and learn a skill or a trade. And some will end up making a better salary than someone with a college degree. I should know.
What we know is that four people were killed at Apalachee. Two were students and two were teachers, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who reported eight other students and a teacher were also injured. The identity of the shooter has been revealed as Colt Gray, 14, who the Barrow County, Ga. Sheriff’s Office said will be charged with first-degree murder as an adult.
CNN is reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had interviewed Gray last year for comments he had made online about a school shooting in May 2023 but “the suspect denied making the comments online.” Gray’s father also told authorities his son didn’t have unsupervised access to the firearms at their house.
As usual, authorities are reported Gray allegedly used an AR-15 style rifle to commit the shootings. There have been 385 mass shootings so far this calendar year averaging about 1.5 per day. And there have been 45 school shooting this calendar year. In an election year, gun violence only becomes an issue when it involves immigrants or non-white people.
I’m a gun owner myself. And as I hated to say, over the next few months, I may have to start carrying it. And it’s perfectly legal here in Oklahoma because I have no prior felony convictions and my firearms were all legally purchased. That’s all that’s required. Yet, I feel there will be crazy people this year as they will try to intimidate voters and election workers even though it is against the law. It sucks it’s come to this point as this election intimidation was supposed to be something we left in the past during the Civil Rights Era.
Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is running for President under the Democrat Nomination has been a vocal opponent to firearms like the AR-15 being sold. “This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies, and it’s just outrageous that everyday in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school, worried about whether or not their child will come home alive. It’s senseless,” Harris said at a campaign rally in New Hampshire. “We’ve got to stop it, and we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all. You know it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Since President George W. Bush lifted the ban on these style of weapons in 2004, they have been used more in active shootings, not just at schools. One of my colleagues in the newspaper business actually said it was fears over Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton taking their firearms, that led to bigger sales from Tulsa-area gun dealers. I don’t understand why people need rifles that fire a lot of ammunition. You’re not going to shoot a deer with an AR-15. You can get cited by a park ranger if your shotgun is loaded with too many shells while waterfowl hunting. But no one is stopping people from going into stores or restaurants with AR-15s.
Apparently, shooting ducks and pheasants is more regulated than shooting children and people who just go to a church to worship. It’s crazy it’s gotten this way, but it’s obvious conservatives and Republicans don’t care. Because if they show any opposition to people having guns, they could lose votes and more importantly, campaign dollars and fringe benefits. So what if some people were shot this week? Gun lobbyists have used the same thing the tobacco people used by saying, “We’re just making a product. We can’t be held responsible.”
Yet at the same time, the gun lobbyists are making sure their voices are heard over the screaming kids because that’s all that matters. I sure hope the students traumatized by the actions this week head to the polls in November. I know that Winder, which is located northeast of Atlanta, is probably mostly conservative. I know people who went to school nearby and still work in that region. I have a college buddy who returned to teach and coach at one of the area schools. He’s mostly a political conservative.
Yet, this goes far and beyond politics. I’m sure the conservative pundits and podcasters are going to spin this in a way that takes the blame away from their side. And we know the politicians on the right are going to find someway to blame this on the Democrats. That’s what Republicans do – fix the blame, not the problem.
This is yet one more reason to keep Trump from returning to the White House.
What to do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 