America's Kids Under Siege (guns and social media)

Maybe you remember your high school days? Peer pressure was intense, no doubt about it. Something about adolescence makes everybody want to fit in, to conform, and to win the love and approval of friends and family. The desire for success leads kids to go out for sports teams, dress in the coolest fashions and learn the lingo of the peer group. Today's kids face several new enemies (1) the social network, and (2) maniacs carrying powerful weapons on to campus.

The social network poses a bigger threat for young people.

It is very unlikely that a crazed individual will enter your kid's high school with the goal of mowing down a group of innocents. Parkland, Florida proved that it does happen. Television brought us there immediately.

Parkland, Florida felt different. We all went to high school. We could relate to being in the classrooms and the thought of an intruder with an AR-15 boggles the mind. Gun lovers complained about FBI's inept performance in not following leads and they have a point. I liked the father who appeared at Trump's White House gathering and said "9/11 happened just once. We were determined that it never happen again." He spoke angrily about why previous mass shootings did not cause enough outrage to bring the school shootings situation to a halt?

We are unlikely to see any changes in gun control laws. Gun owners do not want to be denied just because a few nut cases get out of hand and mow down the citizenry. They have a point, I suppose, and worry constantly that someone "will come and take away the guns." Not sure we have any evidence of that and I wonder where the fear comes from?

The mass shooting of a campus began in Austin, Texas-- my hometown with the infamous Charles Whitman climbing to the top of the tower on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. That was 1966--

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower with three rifles, two pistols, and a sawed-off shotgun. The 25-year-old architectural engineering major and ex-Marine—who had previously complained of searing headaches and depression—had already murdered his mother, Margaret, and his wife, Kathy, earlier that morning. He fired his first shots just before noon, aiming with chilling precision at pedestrians below. “The crime scene spanned the length of five city blocks . . . and covered the nerve center of what was then a relatively small, quiet college town,” noted executive editor Pamela Colloff in her 2006 oral history of the shootings. “Hundreds of students, professors, tourists, and store clerks witnessed the 96-minute killing spree as they crouched behind trees, hid under desks, took cover in stairwells, or, if they had been hit, played dead.”

At the time, there was no precedent for such a tragedy. Whitman “introduced the nation to the idea of mass murder in a public space,” wrote Colloff. By the time he was gunned down by an Austin police officer early that afternoon, he had shot 43 people, thirteen of whom died.

(Texas Monthly)

We've had many years to learn from the Whitman massacre. 

The Vietnam War lead to demonstrations-- and a social movement-- a movement based on peace, love and equality. Times were different. That was the television era. The medium has moved from television to the cellphone. Everybody looking into their own phone....

Slippery Slope: Olympics and Gun Violence

Mikaela Shiffrin won the gold medal in the women's Giant Slalom on Thursday. I couldn't help but notice the amazing speed of the downhill slope. Looked like a sheet of ice. She got down the hill in a hurry, faster than everybody else. But let's go back to the ski slope.

Erik Schopy, an ex-Olympic skier, described the race as follows: “The World Cup runs are pure ice,” Schlopy said. “It’s basically a slab of marble that’s a mile long.”
(Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12)

Mikaela practiced on the icy slopes in Vermont. The conditions in Vermont differ from the powdery snow in Vail, Colorado. Mikaela's workouts in icy Vermont prepared her perfectly for Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and the slab of marble.

Using the metaphor of an icy hill downwards got me to thinking about Parkland, Florida and the loss of 17 young lives. America has a problem it cannot solve. We pride ourselves on solving problems efficiently. This is a nation of problem-solvers. 

The gun issue is so vexing because we cannot solve it. Left-wingers and liberals like the notion of gun control The Right wing, the conservatives, the Trump voters, love the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear firearms. The roadblock in viewpoints has become impassable-- on guns and so many other partisan issues.

Guns either symbolize something important, or actually are important. Gun owners delight in the physical properties of guns and the energy they derive from them -- the way you  love an automobile or a favorite sports team. 

Guns inspires a deep love for many. I'm from Texas. I don't have a gun. Some of my conservative  friends have the AR-15. They truly love their guns. The love buying them. They love selling to each other.  They love talking guns. 

Guns have a tactile quality. The gun folks have always repeated that rifles and pistols will not be taken away from them. They would have to be pried from their "cold, dead hands..." as Charlton Heston said in his famous NRA speech, 

The slippery slope of American society is the anxiety between Left and Right, liberal and conservative, a deep divide with no hope for change. There is nary a sign of flexibility. 

America finds itself going down a slippery slope. Guns, like automobiles and typewriters, are an invention from the past. The firearms debate harkens to the past. You can picture a Civil War era gun owner getting excited by a more efficient rifle. 

The "disruptive" breakthroughs caused by technology is what our present day world is really about yet we are mired in guns. 

Our partisan divide is as dangerous as a skiing down a slab of marble. Mikaela Shiffrin learned to handle icy conditions but politics is trickier and more perilous than a downhill race . 

We have become handcuffed. A great divide has opened up between Left and Right. There is no sign of a solution. We are going downhill with hands locked behind our backs in a psychological straitjacket.

Could mean a bumpy ride for all of us. 

We need an exit from our constant state of internecine warfare.

We need an unexpected lift. A way to Higher Ground.