Dumb and Dumber

 

           Dumb and Dumber

One of the great tragedies in American politics is the decline of regard for the truth among those whose political aspirations exceed their moral fiber. Two such individuals are Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Let's consider Rubio first. As with Cruz and many others who get significant contributions to their campaign funds from the National Rifle Association, he immediately, in the wake of the recent Uvalde, Texas school shootings, said the following:

“There hasn't been a single of these mass shootings that have been purchased at a gun show or on the internet.”

        Apparently, the senator has forgotten the names of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Remember them? They were the individuals behind the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and they acquired their firearms at a gun show with the help of an 18-year-old classmate. In a similar vein, at least one of the handguns Seung-Hui Cho used to kill thirty-two persons at Virginia Tech in 2007 was purchased online. Those are the ones we know about, there are undoubtedly many more out there, sold at gun shows or on-line by unlicensed dealers or private individuals, whose current owners are on nobody’s radar. That is, of course until the shooting starts.

        Of course, like McConnell, Trump, and many others on the Red side of the aisle, these are attempts to dull the efforts of those who call for assault weapons bans and universal, stringent background checks prior to firearms sales. In truth, every single poll involving NRA members has returned results showing that more than half of responding NRA members support rigid background checks prior to firearms sales. In some polls, that percentage has been as high as 75%. So why would a nice Cuban immigrant boy like Rubio support the NRA so avidly? How about Last year’s NRA donation of $3,303,000 to his campaign war chest?

 How odd is it that Republicans excoriate Democrats for supporting labor unions while they, themselves, almost universally as a party, continue running interference for an organization who thinks there are never enough guns, regardless of whose hands they are in? As a former high school teacher, I find Rubio loathsome for several reasons but none more so than this.

 Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is even more off the rails, on the issue. On May 24 he said (referring to the Uvalde shootings),

 “We know from past experiences that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus.”

 Apparently not in this case. While there have been, and continue to be, various and often conflicting reports elated to what happened at Robb Elementary School, on May 25, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw initially said that before the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school and shot and killed at least 19 children and two teachers, he was confronted by a district school resource officer, the standard title for armed police officers who work on school grounds. That assertion was later “walked back” as it appeared that Ramos had entered the building unobstructed by the armed Resource officer who was on duty. However, related to Cruz’s statement: a non-profit which concerns itself with researching gun related issues found that in Santa Fe and in three other prominent shootings in 2018 — Kentucky’s Marshall County High School in January; Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February; Maryland’s Great Mills High School in March — "attackers stormed campuses despite the presence of armed guards." "In every case, guards failed to stop the shooter from killing.” As events, and the “operative explanations” unravel in Texas, it is beginning to seem that armed police even hesitated to engage the shooter for some time.

 The Rand think tank examined data from U.S. schools between 2014 to 2018 to evaluate the impact of school resource officers. It found that school resource officers "do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents.”

        It is crucial, when engaging in this dialogue, to bear in mind who does the surveys and where their interests lie. Cruz, a recipient of significant NRA moneys, ergo hardly an unbiased observer, received $176,000 in NRA funding last year! One organization which is far more likely to be relatively unbiased, the American Medical Association, funded a 2021 study on the issue. Published in the JAMA, their data suggested “No association between having an armed officer and deterrence of violence" in mass shootings from 1980 to 2019. "Prior research suggests that many school shooters are actively suicidal, intending to die in the act, so an armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent," the study said.

Following Cruz’s statemen, a “spokesperson,” attempting to validate his falsehood, pointed to a 2019 article that referenced 2005 research that suggested “increased police presence leads to fewer people committing crimes”. So, what’s wrong with that? Unlike the studies referenced above, the article and research mentioned by Cruz’s talking head wasn’t even addressing school shootings specifically, but was generalized to all public situations such as concerts, sporting events, shopping malls, etc.

There are factors related to these tragedies which seem to slide under the radar to some extent. Guns seem to be seen by the school shooters as some sort of “solution” to what are obviously their significant underlying mental and emotional issues. Bullying seems to head this list exacerbated, so it would seem, by parents who are in some cases (Columbine, Uvalde, Stoneman Douglas, etc.?) either blind to the activities and issues of their children or unwilling to intervene until too late. Making guns available to these troubled adolescents just provides the modality for a far more deadly “acting out” event.

As a former teacher I also feel that “No Child Left Behind,” (NCLB) while undoubtedly well intended, can cause far greater issues at the local level that any bureaucrat ever intended or any President (“Is our children learning?”) was capable of understanding. The Stoneman Douglas and Uvalde shooters showed red flag behaviors both at home and in school, but both remained enrolled until it was far too late. In a similar vein, psychiatric heath care professionals had identified both James Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho as mentally unstable, yet there were apparently few concerns or interventions related to their propensity for violence, yet Cho killed thirty-two people and wounded seventeen others with two semi-automatic pistols, one of which was definitely bought online. Likewise, Holmes, whose youth was littered with emotional red flags killed twelve and wounded seventy with weapons he should never have been allowed to possess.

At the public school level,  NCLB (Subpart 14, Section 5541: Grants for the Integration of Schools and Mental Health Systems) would seem to provide for enhanced mental health concern and scrutiny at the Elementary and Mid-Hi levels, and yet…A comprehensive study related to connections between school mental health services and No Child Left Behind, conducted by a National Institute of Mental Health researcher, found that between 5% and 9% of students face emotional and behavioral issues that impede their learning.  Beyond this, a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on the interaction between school policies and health for adolescents noted in 2008 that some twenty percent of students annually demonstrate evidence of experiencing a mental health issue.

As we continue to see demonstrated, it only takes one. This is a far from simple issue but banning assault weapons nationwide and negating easy and unverified access to guns by unstable individuals would certainly go a long way toward reducing the body count of our children. And by the way …the top two US states with respect to gun deaths last year? Texas (3,647) and Florida (2449). Think about that.