IT’S MADDENING

Since the Columbine shootings, 122 mass killings of students have occurred. With the death or suicides of perpetrators, 128 fatalities.

These are the 10 deadliest school shootings since Columbine (15 deaths):

1.    2007 Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Va. — 33 deaths

2.    2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Conn. — 27 deaths

3.    2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Fla. — 17 deaths

4.    2015 Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Ore. — 10 deaths

5.    2018 Santa Fe High School, Santa Fe, Tex. — 10 deaths

6.    2005 Red Lake Senior High School, Red Lake, Minn. — 7 deaths

7.    2012 Oikos University, Oakland, Calif. — 7 deaths

8.    2006 West Nickel Mines School, Bart Township, Penn. — 6 deaths

9.    2008 Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, Ill. — 6 deaths

10.    2014 Marysville Pilchuck High School, Marysville, Wa. — 5 deaths

"More people have been killed at schools this year than have been killed while serving in the military" — just over 30, versus just under 30, per the Washington Post's Philip Bump.

Yes, but: "The figures ... do not suggest schools are more dangerous than combat zones. After all, there are more than 50 million students in public elementary and high schools and only about 1.3 million members of the armed forces. So far in 2018, a member of the military has been about 40 times as likely to be killed as someone is to die in a school shooting."

The reasoning of this statement does not prove anything since we don’t send our children to war-zones, we send them for an education that comes with the peaceful understanding that allows for debate and reasonable discourse, not indiscriminate mass killings. Besides, what is that argument is stating, that since less died in schools than on a battlefield, it is OK for people like Vice President Pence or Senator Cruz to state that their “prayers” go out to the families of the victims or that we need to identify the people with mental illness rather than take away their source of murder?

Maybe the real source of murder is Congress and the Republican Party. Maybe it is time to stop kidding ourselves and look in the mirror knowing full well that we are enabling a false concept that the Second Amendment means that ordinary citizens can individually arm themselves. That they are all single militia’s, that they have a right to carry these arms, where their disgruntled and misguided children and sometimes themselves can exact revenge for the slights they feel they experienced.

I need to know what the rules are, the bogus Second Amendment “Right” or the safety of our children? We are slaughtering our youth due to passive resistance to the carnage and the ill-conceived notions about the Second Amendment. Do we suspend the rights of the potential victims, do we lay this blame on anything other than Congress taking the appropriate actions needed to protect our children? Keeping a gun in the house doesn’t make the world safer from intruders, since they invade our schools, killing for more victims and far more frequently. Who are we kidding?

I doubt that shutting down the NRA is the answer. The answer is in our laws, our sane choices that weigh the value of an argument that states someone’s Second Amendment rights are being taken away as opposed to taking away our children's lives, permanently.

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