{"id":2622,"date":"2018-02-15T00:37:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T08:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=2622"},"modified":"2018-02-15T00:37:15","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T08:37:15","slug":"column-a-florida-high-school-massacre-and-guns-a-requiem-for-sanity-the-chicago-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=2622","title":{"rendered":"“Column: A Florida high school massacre and guns: A requiem for sanity”, The Chicago Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rex Huppke,\u00a0<\/span>Contact Reporter, Opinion, February 14, 2018<\/p>\n

Seventeen dead in a high school. South Florida.<\/p>\n

A former student, 19. Armed to the teeth. A semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. Made to kill.<\/p>\n

Police officers running to the school, machine guns drawn. A mother texting her son to turn off his phone’s ringer so the killer with the rifle won\u2019t hear it and find him.<\/p>\n

A slaughter.<\/p>\n

Seventeen dead. At a high school. In America.<\/p>\n

It has happened before, it happened Wednesday and it will happen again.<\/p>\n

Why? Because nothing. We do nothing.<\/p>\n

School shooting. Nothing.<\/p>\n

School shooting. Nothing.<\/p>\n

School shooting. Nothing.<\/p>\n

Thoughts and prayers. Don\u2019t talk about guns. Don\u2019t politicize deaths.<\/p>\n

Too soon, too soon, too soon.<\/p>\n

Thoughts and prayers and thoughts and prayers and thoughts and prayers.<\/p>\n

A tweet from the president. Nothing more. It gets a tweet. No spoken words.<\/p>\n

Seventeen dead.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t talk about guns.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s mental health. Mental health, right? Got to fix mental health. Never do, but keep saying it.<\/p>\n

Seventeen dead Wednesday. What\u2019s changed since the last one? Nothing. When was the last one? Can\u2019t remember. It\u2019s a blur.<\/p>\n

Mass shootings in America \u2014 in schools, at concerts, in movie theaters \u2014 are a blur.<\/p>\n

Read that again: Mass shootings in America are a blur. A blur.<\/p>\n

What do we do?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t talk about guns. Evil can\u2019t be stopped. Guns aren\u2019t to blame. Weapons of mass killing have nothing to do with mass killings. Nope.<\/p>\n

Listen to the National Rifle Association<\/a>. The world is scary. You need guns. More. More. More.<\/p>\n

Listen to the politicians who get the money from the NRA which gets the money from the people who make the guns and the bullets and the bulletproof vests we ought to send kids to school wearing so they don\u2019t die when bullets fly from a gun in the hands of a maniac who fell through the cracks and could only have been caught, could only have been stopped, if we had better mental health care or if we had teachers carrying guns or no more gun-free zones or something, anything, that isn\u2019t tougher gun laws.<\/p>\n

What do we do?<\/p>\n

Cry. Shout. Scream.<\/p>\n

Vote?<\/p>\n

Nah. Just arm people. Arm ’em all.<\/p>\n

Arm the teachers. Arm the janitors. Arm the principal, the front-office manager, the librarian.<\/p>\n

Arm your kid. Arm the crossing guard. Arm the bus drivers.<\/p>\n

Arm store clerks and salespeople and gas station attendants. Arm mall cops. Arm doctors and nurses and dentists and surgeons. Arm priests, arm nuns and monks and rabbis and imams.<\/p>\n

Arm your neighbor. Let your neighbor arm you.<\/p>\n

Arm your friends, arm your lovers, arm your aunts, arm your mother, arm your dad and brothers and uncles and aunts, arm your sons and daughters, arm your cousins and in-laws and Facebook friends and every damn person you\u2019ve ever met and keep them armed at all times, for they are the good guys with guns who will fend off the bad guys with guns, and don\u2019t you talk for a minute \u2014 not a minute \u2014 about gun laws because it\u2019s too soon and you\u2019re politicizing a tragedy and no, no, no, no, no, no, no you mustn\u2019t infringe on any American\u2019s freedom to own and bear and fire and fetishize firearms even if it keeps costing life after life after life in places where young human beings should feel safe.<\/p>\n

Arm ’em all. That\u2019s the answer. That\u2019s what the NRA wants.<\/p>\n

Seventeen dead in a high school. Massacred. Nothing we could\u2019ve done, right? Mental health, right?<\/p>\n

Now back to the blur. On to the next time. On to nothing.<\/p>\n

Tougher gun laws wouldn\u2019t have stopped those schoolchildren in Florida from dying, right?<\/p>\n

So what allowed it?<\/p>\n

What do we tell those parents? Grieving. Heartbroken. Ruined.<\/p>\n

This is what I\u2019ll tell them. This is what I\u2019ll tell the NRA. This is what I\u2019ll tell politicians who line their pockets with blood money and sit on their hands.<\/p>\n

This is what I\u2019ll say: I don\u2019t know exactly what would\u2019ve stopped children from being murdered at a South Florida high school. But I know for certain that what allowed it to happen was America doing nothing. America doing what it always does in the wake of slaughters.<\/p>\n

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.<\/p>\n

Nothing gets us 17 dead on the ground in a high school.<\/p>\n

Nothing is insanity.<\/p>\n

Nothing has to stop.<\/p>\n

RELATED<\/strong><\/p>\n

Former student opens fire at Florida high school, killing at least 17 \u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

School shooting suspect made ‘disturbing’ social media posts leading up to tragedy \u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Students recount horror of Florida school shooting \u00bb<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chicago Tribune<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rex Huppke,\u00a0Contact Reporter, Opinion, February 14, 2018 Seventeen dead in a high school. South Florida. A former student, 19. Armed to the teeth. A semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. Made to kill. Police officers running to the school, machine guns drawn. A mother texting her son to turn off his phone’s ringer so the killer with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2623,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2622\/revisions\/2623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}