Who Will Make Our Schools Safe? - And Response (3)

  • Tuesday, May 22, 2018

What does it take to make Hamilton County schools safe?  I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is nothing in place in our county to stop the same copycat killers from striking right here.

Budget?  We spend $400,000,000 on schools in Hamilton County right now. Do you want to put little white crosses up in front of one of our schools or redistribute some of that slush fund into protecting our students? 

Why do we protect our city and county justice buildings with limited access doors and armed guards but not our schools? Where are our priorities?  

We were asleep when a terrorist killed six service men right here in Chattanooga. Couldn't happen here, right?  

The powers that be are kicking this football down the street. Who will take this and run with it? The sheriff, school board, county commission? We don't need to hear "I thought somebody else would handle it?" 

Forget socio-economic integration. We all bleed red. 

Harry Presley 

* * * 

I would first like to correct you on two things before responding. First, we were not asleep on July 16, 2015. The fool was stopped by our amazing police force rather quickly and they had adequate supplies to do so. He got the jump on the victims, but then again, that's how an ambush works... Secondly, there were only five victims (Hence the Chattanooga Fallen Five).  

Now, I've said it before that we have guaranteed ways of keeping firearms out of public buildings that we've been employing for decades. Oh, the expense! They have it at the county courthouse when I go to pay my tags. They have it at every courthouse, even at the airports. Metal detectors would work with high efficiency, tomorrow. Gun control measures would take years to implement and probably decades to get reasonably effective.  

I'll also repeat myself. I don't believe this is a gun problem; school shootings are a white male problem. Guns don't discriminate against their users. All of the major school shootings are white males. I think we could dig into that a little deeper and reveal some underlying causes that result in a white male going postal. 

That's two ways that I propose to make our schools safer. What do you propose? 

Tim Giordano

* * * 

Ex-Vice President Joe Biden (currently fantasizing about being president when he’s 80 years old) introduced a bill in Congress which became the Gun Free School School Zones Act of 1990. Since then every mass shooting that has taken place in a public school was in a gun free zone. He won’t boast about that law now.

Ex-VP Biden also doesn’t want you to know who was behind the March for Our Lives event. Clearly, sixteen-year-olds did not pay for the event in DC. They couldn’t secure parade or march permits or fund the transportation for thousands of marchers. Regardless of student fears, sincerity and whatever the narrative, adults are still organizing, financing and staging these events. And having well known musical entertainers performing free certainly did enlarge the audience in DC.

In a piece in the Washington Post on Wednesday, March 28, 2018, Maryland University Professor Dana R. Fisher reveals much about the DC march. Fisher states while the media’s focus has been on it being a student driven event, 90 percent of the marchers were adults,  the majority of them being middle-aged women. Students were out in front and visible, but only about 10%, according to Fisher, were under 18. It sounds more like a “Me Too” march than students worried about  protecting our students. Regardless of all the huff and puff about “listening to the students,” it’s just another phase of the Resistance Movement. 

Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney (both mentioned as presidential candidates) were principal financiers in the DC event as was Spielberg and the wife and other celebrity leftists.

With mid-term elections looming, the “Resistance” needed to mobilize their base. So far they’ve got nothing but “no” votes, shadowy Russians, porn stars and a desire for a payback impeachment humiliation.

Demonizing the NRA and threatening Congress won’t protect our students. These tactics are right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook for radicals. In fact the DC march was so well organized, one wonders if the same people that organized the anti-Trump rally in NYC in January of 2016 gleefully joined in the planning of the DC event. The NYC march was often praised by CNN and MSNBC reporters for how well organized it was, coincidentally just like the DC march.

But protestors don’t talk about the disastrous breakdown in the system to protect the students in Florida or the need for increased mental health services to identify potentially dangerous people and get them help. And there have been few comments about the brave resource officer in Maryland who stopped that school attack with his gun. It was easier to focus on banning guns, guns which they can’t even describe.  

Has anyone focused on  a few days after the tragic shooting in Broward County, a deputy supposedly guarding the school was found asleep in his car? Did anyone question how the brother of the alleged Florida shooter was able to gain easy access to the same campus a short time later? That’s certainly not protecting our students is it?

Let’s put the whole issue into context of who is behind the protests, walk outs, marches and boycotts. It’s the same people who told us if you make abortion illegal, people would get one illegally and are now wanting you to believe if you make guns illegal nobody will get one. They say wearing or displaying the American flag can be very offensive but burning an American flag shouldn’t offend you.  On college campuses they demand the removal of all references to gender but at the same time march for Women’s Rights and women’s studies.

These are only a few examples of the delusional world of altered reality of the leftist activists. And like good liberals they annually give each other awards and prizes to try and legitimize their shenanigans. Confront them with facts and it shatters their fantasies. Then the usual suspects attack you personally, call you anti-intellectual or childish names in attempt to shut you down.

Remember the sudden appearance of the Occupy Crowd in 2014, a supposed spontaneous grass roots movement against Wall Street? The left needed some big issue in an off year election. In 2014 it was Occupy, today the same people are posing as students in a desperate attempt to mobilize their base. Did it change Wall Street or shut them down?

Protecting students? Really? Here we are several months later and several more shootings and little has changed. It’s about politics.

Someone made a very wise comment recently: let’s take the half billion dollars given to Planned Parenthood and use to harden schools and hire trained security. It would be a start.

Ralph Miller

* * *

Dear Mr. Miller,

Thank you for your insight into issues which have been brought to light as a result of increasing school shootings. It is very obvious that a handful of students did not organize the march supposedly aimed at resolving the tragedy of armed attacks on our schools.

While no one likes metal detectors, airport screenings, etc., the sooner we all accept these measures designed to help deter violent individuals the better. How are we "helping" students feel safer by leaving them open to attack?

Right now there are various groups of trained and experienced individuals ready, willing, and able to take posts to protect our schools. The delay can only be attributed to the refusal to accept the reality of dead students and teachers at our feet. Money? Politics? Ignorance? What is this
insanity?

It was strange to me that very little if any media coverage was given to the fact that the shooter in Texas did not use a "military" style weapon. He did not use high capacity weapons. In fact, he used weapons difficult to reload quickly. Not much emphasis was placed on the statement that he wore a long trench coat to school each day.  If you wonder what the significance of the trench coat is, check the columbine shooters dress code and then watch Keanu Reeves in the first movie of the "Matrix" trilogy.

Mr. Miller also mentions a statement made recently about taking funding from planned parenthood and using it to protect our schools. I've been scratching my head about that issue since the signing of The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212). That is a United States law which recognizes an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim, if they are injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." 

Ted Ladd, Ooltewah

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