{"id":38432,"date":"2018-02-15T11:36:13","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T16:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=38432"},"modified":"2018-02-15T11:36:15","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T16:36:15","slug":"parkland-slaughter-should-hit-home-in-chester-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=38432","title":{"rendered":"Parkland slaughter should hit home in Chester County"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If you had a pit in the stomach this morning when you sent your kids off to school, you were probably not alone. I certainly did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida should hit home for folks here in Chester County. Like so many of our community high schools, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is in an affluent suburb. The school has an average SAT score of 1230 \u2014 that would slot it right between No. 2 Unionville (1247) and No. 3 Great Valley (1208) in terms of Chester County SAT averages. The school has consistently been ranked in the top 20 high schools in Florida.<\/span><\/p>\n

The obvious conclusion: this could happen here.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as shootings at schools continue, maybe it seems inevitable. Since the massacre of 26 \u2014 20 of whom were young children \u2014 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. in 2012 there have been 430 people shot in 273 school shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Digest this: our kids are not safe at school.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as we know from the last four months, they\u2019re not particularly safe at concerts, the mall or in church, either.<\/span><\/p>\n

After every mass killing, we get the \u201cprayers and thoughts\u201d speech (which I took a great deal of abuse back in 2016<\/a> for pointing out were pretty hollow). And then\u2026..?<\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

50-plus people and 400-plus wounded in Las Vegas, thanks in part to something called a \u201cbump stop\u201d that makes semi-automatic rifles act more like a full auto weapon. Is it banned, regulated, or in any way hindered? <\/span><\/p>\n

Nope.<\/span><\/p>\n

26 people slaughtered in a church in Sunderland, Texas. Anything? <\/span><\/p>\n

Crickets.<\/span><\/p>\n

And now, 17 dead in a Florida high school.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s safe to say, there will be no response from our elected officials.<\/span><\/p>\n

Near as I can find the only actions taken by the federal government in the last couple of years are to make it easier for the mentally disturbed to get guns and President Donald Trump, in his new budget proposal, seeking to cut funds for federal background checks and of course members of Congress fighting tooth and nail to make sure those on the terror watch list can still buy guns.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the only solution we keep hearing is \u201cif you armed the (teachers\/musicians\/preachers) they\u2019d be able to stop these things from happening.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Which is, of course, a steaming pile of cow manure. History teaches us that.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2009, an Army major shot and killed 13 and wounded more than 30 at Fort Hood in Texas. Presumably, the Army has a lot of well armed and trained people \u2014 and yet they couldn\u2019t stop the shooter. In the 2017 shooting in Sunderland, a man across the street grabbed his AR-15 and attempted to stop the shooting \u2014 wounding the shooter as he left \u2014 but 26 people still died that day. The \u201cgood guy with a gun\u201d theory never holds up to closer scrutiny \u2014 despite that, people keep bringing it forward, actually arguing that a pitched gun battle in a school is a good thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next straw man argument is mental health. I totally agree that we need to do a vastly better job of both expanding access to mental health care \u2014 but I think one can argue that Canada has mentally ill people \u2014 yet sees 1\/6th the number of gun homicides per capita. Australia, too, probably has mentally ill people and has 1\/21 the number of gun homicides annually, per capita.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the difference? Yes, both countries have national health care \u2014 which may cut down on homicides, some. But, I don\u2019t see gun rights advocates fighting for a U.S. National Health Care program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nope.<\/span><\/p>\n

A closer look at the numbers tells the story: countries with tougher gun laws \u2014 like Australia and Canada \u2014 have less deaths.<\/span><\/p>\n

No law will stop all gun homicides, but universal background checks will keep guns out of the hands of at least some folks who shouldn\u2019t have them. Banning bump stops and high capacity magazines can help prevent large scale massacres. I\u2019m not sure why we need military weapons with vastly higher muzzle velocities (three times higher than a handgun) that literally rip people to shreds, either, to be honest.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it is not going to change. Our elected officials, largely, are too afraid or too beholden to the National Rifle Association. They take the bundles of cash and live in fear of the NRA putting money and people into a primary race if they don\u2019t do their bidding.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not now, nor has it ever been about the Second Amendment. It\u2019s about cash \u2014 money to politicians and unit sales and profits for gun makers. They\u2019ve put a price on the lives of your kids, essentially, and taken the money and ran.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, they are much more afraid of the NRA, then they are of you, the voters. And besides, enough folks keep voting for them, anyway, which I guess means they\u2019re OK with these massacres.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile the rest of us, knowing something could be \u2014 should be \u2014 done, are forced to offer our own \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d that the next shooting won\u2019t be here, won\u2019t target our children, that our loved ones won\u2019t make Downingtown, East Marlborough or Tredyriffin the next Parkland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thoughts and prayers.<\/span><\/p>\n

They don\u2019t seem to be doing much, are they?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times If you had a pit in the stomach this morning when you sent your kids off to school, you were probably not alone. I certainly did. Yesterday\u2019s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida should hit home for folks here in Chester County. Like so many of our community high schools, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[320,9789,7426,10051,2392,5959],"class_list":["post-38432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-congress","tag-election-2018","tag-featured","tag-gun-violence","tag-nra","tag-parkland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38433,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38432\/revisions\/38433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}