Here’s the statements he’s made as head of the NRA since our most recent school shooting – well, the most recent as of this writing.
“North called for metal detectors in schools and pushed the National Rifle Association’s ‘school shield’ agenda, which he said offers school’s a free security assessment that includes looking at how people enter and exit buildings.”
“North on Sunday also suggested that much or at least part of the problem with school shootings is young people, mostly males, being exposed to a culture of violence and being on Ritalin, a medication prescribed largely to help with attention deficit disorder, or ADD.”
Notice how guns had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. So let’s look at the other variables if guns aren’t the problem. For starts, all the shooters are young white men with disturbing affinities for nazis and white power and access to weapons of war based on a perverted reading of the Second Amendment. Ok, not much in the way of variables there. That pattern seems pretty set in place.
Next – mental illness. Well, women have mental illness and they don’t grab assault rifles and shoot people – even when they’re bleeding, have cramps that bend them over and are still expected to make dinner. So that may not hold up as a reason.
Ah, let’s blame ritalin – except most of these young men were not on it.
Let’s blame violent video games. Oh wait, millions of people play them, including millions of young men who feel no desire to kill people in reality after playing those games.
Hmm… are you starting to see what I see? The only constant in these situations are angry young men with guns. So wouldn’t common sense suggest that we limit either the number of young men in our society or the number of guns. Given those are the only two constants in this horror story, it seems that’s where we need to start.
As for the suggestion that we need to better protect our schools with metal detectors, doors and cops – when in the hell did we become a society in which our kids have to be placed all but behind bars with gun toting security guards in order to learn in safety – oh wait, here we go again. That school in Texas had all those securities in place, including a school shooting safety plan. Yet ten people are still dead. So maybe, just maybe, those plans don’t work.
Ah, my friends. We know the answer, don’t we? Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. Really, what else could it be?