Dr. John Lott’s newest piece is available here. This piece is different than most that he writes. It is about what one of his children experienced at the “Walk Out” for gun control on Wednesday. The piece starts this way.
My daughter is a junior in high school, and her high school participated in Wednesday’s National School Walkout. On Monday the principal assured parents and students that the event wouldn’t be political, that it would just be a memorial commemorating the 17 people murdered at a Parkland, Florida high school a month earlier.
With her peers jumping at the chance to get out of class, my daughter felt pressure to go. She figured it would be OK, given that the principal promised that the event would just be a memorial for the victims. If she were the only student not to skip class, her teacher wouldn’t be able to go. Did she really want to be that lone student? What would her friends think and what might they infer about her political views?
The event turned political, with what appeared to be professionally written speeches mirroring the normal rhetoric that one hears from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety: that respect for the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mean we can’t have “reasonable” gun regulations.
The speeches called for background checks on private transfers of guns and banning of “assault weapons” such as the AR-15. There was no debate, no alternative perspective offered. Something had to be done to save lives, students were told. But nothing was said about removing gun-free zone signs or letting armed staff and teachers defend the students.
Despite the principal’s promises, no administrator or teacher tried to interrupt the students’ political rants. My daughter guessed that the speeches had been pre-approved by the school. One wonders how else schools let politics infect their classrooms.
But at least one polling company doesn’t think students are particularly onboard with the gun control agenda.
“Young people statistically aren’t that much different than anybody else,” noted Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport just last month, after the attack in Florida.
You wouldn’t have guessed it from the television coverage, but only about 3,000 schools participated out of some 24,000 public and 10,000 private high schools in the U.S. But the media likes giving the impression of nearly universal support for more gun control laws.
What concerned me even more was my daughter’s fear that I might mention her name or her school. It really bothers me that having certain political views that are held by a large percentage of Americans makes her fearful how others will react if they knew she had been uncomfortable with Wednesday’s events. . . .
The rest of the piece is available here.
SOMEONE needs to do some digging and OUT the organisers behind this. WHO has paid for the materials, built the websited, coordinated the communication.. events like this can’t “just happen” out of noehwere in a couple weeks’ time. Some VERY skilled and seasoned adults have put this together.
Remember when we were all amazed and wondering about the Occupy “movement” a few years back? Once the underpinnings were exposed it all crumbled very quickly. This is that same gang of dissidents stirring the pot again. This time thir ocus is different, but their goalposts have not moved.
Reminds me a whole lot of back when the commies would infiltrate into a new country, stir up a bit of ruckus, place their operatives, stir up more, build a local infrastructure, work that. and then, in the space of a couple years, have a revolution that “came from the grassroots” and sprang up to fill a void that needed filling. Not quite….
same thing here.