Roy Exum: What Do We Do Now?

  • Sunday, March 25, 2018
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

On a Saturday when millions upon millions of people in every continent except Antarctica marched against guns in schools, there was not a one of them who knows what to do about it. The National Park Service said a half-million gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. yesterday, but a far more meaningful number was printed in the morning’s Washington Post – more than 187,000 students have been exposed to gun violence at their own schools since Columbine. Need I add that none will forget it?

As you think how absolutely grotesque it is that in a nation as promising as ours we are totally stymied, mull over the fact that after 17 were massacred in the latest mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla. (Feb. 14), the Gun Violence Archive website confirmed that in the 37 days following the massacre, 73 school children ages 16 and under were shot and killed somewhere in the United States.

Some were shot on their way to school. Another was walking home with his mom. What have we become? In the shooting gallery we once called Chicago – get this – five human beings were shot between midnight and 8 a.m. yesterday. This month – and today is actually the 25th – we’ve had 95 shot and 24 dead. That’s just Chicago. For the year thus far, 385 wounded, 85 dead. And you can’t get a grip around the news that 73 children have been shot since February 14th?

Check that … the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office just announced that Jaelynn Rose Willey, the 16-year-old shot Tuesday at a Maryland high school in Great Mills, has been taken off of life support. Her mother said there was “nothing, no life left” in the girl who loved being on the swim team.

Again, absolutely no one knows what to do. The boy who killed Willey, this after a teenage romance went sour, was immediately shot and killed by an alert SRO but nobody can tell any of us how Jim Hammond, our sheriff, should respond when in a matter of days he will be ordered by state law to put guns in schools.

We know the cheapest solution is arming certain teachers. Cry, mumble, rage in your disgust but the raw fact is there are level-headed teachers who have discharged a firearm in their “real life” but who have quietly indicated that, as appalling as it may well be, they would rather shoot back than stand defenseless as a child under their care is shot before their eyes. I have a dozen emails that confirm it.

The state of Florida, rushing to respond after the shocking six minutes at Douglas High before police could respond, has already passed a new law. SB 7026 is stuffed with a number of new gun measures. There is a three-day wait period on gun sales, raising the age requirement for all firearms sales to 21, some regulation of bump stocks, and allocating $69 million to the state’s Department of Education for mental health programs – things that should have been done long ago.

While the Florida bill will allow county sheriff’s offices to establish the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program, an initiative that would arm select school staff members, there’s a huge Catch-22. Most teachers will be excluded, except for ROTC teachers, but that’s not the dilemma.

The bill demands and requires armed personnel on every campus but virtually does nothing to fund the cost. Further, it limits counties with the ability to raise taxes and offers extra money to arm custodians and cafeteria workers. My gracious, if that were the case in Chattanooga we couldn’t pay for the liability insurance.

Please, are you beginning to understand why Sheriff Hammond keeps his hair so short he cannot pull it out? He has done a preliminary count and to hire 50 additional School Resource Officers, train them to Sheriff’s Department standards, and put them in the schools where there is no security of any kind it will cost $4 million (each year.)

In Florida’s Pinellas County (Clearwater, St. Petersburg) they are already facing a strained SRO budget and Sheriff Bob Gualtieri says it will cost him an extra $12.4 million to put an SRO at every school. In nearby Hillsboro County (Tampa), there is a $3.5 million SRO shortfall already so they’ve launched a “guardians” program

Former Tampa Police assistant Chief John Newman has built up an army of what he calls “licensed security guards.” He’s got over 125 retired military and retired law enforcement officials who work a 10-month schedule at a salary of just over $30,000. They cannot make arrests, mind you, but their guns will keep some miscreant at bay until the real police arrive. Further, any potential shooter knows these guys are armed to the teeth and the cost is about 50 percent less than SROs.

Well, nobody likes the guardians’ idea. School superintendents want fully-trained SROs. Nobody wants to sacrifice education money for security needs and nobody wants to defy the state law by not having armed guards. But you can bet there is not one pair of hairy legs who dares ask the legislature for more money. In short, Florida -- in fact -- has a huge mess to confront.

And then there is the Blue Mountain School District in rural Schuylkill County in Pennsylvania. That’s where Superintendent David Helsel called the gravel yard and had a bucket of rocks placed in every classroom. That’s right – rocks, like David used to slay the giant Goliath. In Pennsylvania they are going to “stone” any shooter.

Before you laugh any longer, a bucket of rocks may first appear as silly but it sure beats what 50 schools in Chattanooga have right now and the ‘Super” isn’t even allowing slingshots. The school district has 2,700 students and you get that many cookie grumblers, bus drivers, all the women in the kitchen and some teachers who turn vicious guarding their broods … believe me, that can produce one heckuva hail storm.

“At first the idea was to use golf balls but they bounce too easy. There would be collateral damage. Rocks don’t bounce and, listen, we have some kids who can chunk ‘em. A rock is safe but if it hits you it’s hard.”

Helsel said every student in the system has already been instructed in what he calls, “ALICE” – Alert-Lockdown-Inform-Counter-and-Evacuate. “We strive to keep our students safe and this is actually a small part of our total effort,” he said, knowing well what a Linus-blanket that bucket of rocks will be in every classroom.

* * *

TENNESSEE WILL have a bill very similar to the Florida instrument in a matter of days. Other ideas being floated are to utilize the National Guard members in shifts in lieu of two weeks at summer camp, have parents guard the perimeters of school property who would report suspicious individuals, allowing law enforcement access to hospital records of aggressive mental illness patients, and requiring a more active social services program that is horribly underfunded and poorly managed in Tennessee because …. Once again … no agency has any money.

* * *

“In an ideal world, none of us would be here. In an ideal world, the 20 first-graders and kindergartners who died at Sandy Hook would be in middle school today. In an ideal world, the 58 concert-goers who were gunned down in Las Vegas would have returned to be with their families. In an ideal world, the 32 students who died at Virginia Tech would be employed professionals, and the 17 victims from Stoneman Douglas would probably be eating lunch at school right now, and the only thing they would be worrying about is a test next period. But this isn’t the case.”  -- Michael Brooks, sophomore in high school.

* * *

“Columbine was so frightening. And the media took off with it, like everything else, so it instilled more fear in people. You're looking around at school for kids like the ones who committed the shootings, and you feel wrong for doing that, you know?” -- John Robinson

* * *

“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.” -- Clint Eastwood

* * *

“As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. The only person who’s going to be penalized and have difficulty is the law-abiding citizen, who then cannot have it if he wants the protection of a weapon in his home.” -- Ronald Reagan

* * *

“The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose.” --James Earl Jones

royexum@aol.com

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