Tag: Schools

Those Awful Shootings

This is a re-post from my other blog, Daily Agitator, about the history we have with shootings, especially school shootings.

Just this past weekend a local high school had to cancel their homecoming dance because of a gun threat.

Every time there is a shooting the same lame statements are issued by politicians….for it is easier than actually doing something.

School Shootings: A Retrospective

When will this madness end?

A question every sane person should be asking.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

All Those School Shootings

There has been a rash…no that is the best word….and epidemic of shootings in our schools with massive deaths and injuries and all ask what the hell has happened?

Today is the anniversary of the horrible Uvalde school massacre….

Why is this happening with such frequency?

That question has an answer….but few will heed or even care as long as daddy gets to strut around wearing his pistol….

This is a study that tries to answer some of the questions (an interesting read but sadly it will go unread) ….

High school students who experience violence or bullying at school are more likely to bring weapons like a gun, knife, or club to school than those who have not experienced violence, according to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Because weapons increase the potential for injury and death when there is interpersonal conflict, developing a better understanding of the relationship between exposure to violence and weapon carrying is essential for developing effective public health interventions.

“With 93 school shootings in the US just the 2020-21 period alone, and an average school shooter age of 19.7 years (in since 1970), the issue of school violence couldn’t be more pressing. The occurrence of violence in is an urgent and complex public health problem,” explained lead investigator Richard Lowry, MD, MS, Office of the Director, National Center for Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA, U.S..

“Our research examined the link between exposure to violence and weapon carrying. We found students who experienced violence at school were much more likely to carry weapons than those who had not experienced violence,” he noted.

Data on 28,442 participants from the CDC’s National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys from 2017 and 2019 were analyzed to calculate sex-stratified, adjusted prevalence ratios, which were also adjusted for race/ethnicity, grade, , current substance use, suicidal thoughts, and history of concussion. The research is novel because it used recent data available, has results for males and females, and is adjusted for important demographic factors.

Overall, 3.3% of US carried a weapon at school. Among all students, 6.6% were threatened or injured with a weapon at school, 19.3% were bullied at school, 8.3% were in a physical fight at school, and 7.7% were absent from school due to safety concerns.

Nearly half of males (48.8%) who experienced all of these forms of violence, and nearly a third of females (31.4%) who did, carried at school. Males and females were respectively 3.5 and 3.9 times more likely to carry a weapon if they had been threatened or injured with a weapon at school, and 3.4 and 3.7 times more likely following a physical fight at school. Males who felt unsafe were twice as likely to miss school, while females were three times more likely than those who didn’t report feeling unsafe.

https://phys.org/news/2023-05-reaction-school-violence-compounds-crisis.html

Did this answer any of your questions about schooling shootings?

Another post on the mass shootings will be forthcoming….watch for it.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

More On Uvalde

After the disastrous response by the Uvalde police the news just keep coming….and coming….

The Texas House has proved just how cowardly even the Congress can be….in a hearing about the shootings and death….it seems that parents of the dead are intimidating…..

The family of a child killed in the Uvalde mass shooting was forced to leave a meeting about the massacre after an official complained that they were “intimidated” by them.

Journalists, a local chaplain and the relative of a victim were all asked to leave Uvalde City Hall on Monday afternoon ahead of a closed-door hearing before the Texas House of Representatives, according to CNN.

CNN reporter Shimon Prokupec tweeted that they were removed “because people are intimidated by us”.

“Texas legislators are meeting here with law enforcement behind closed doors,” he tweeted.

“The fire marshal also told a local chaplain and father of a victim to exit from the building.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/uvalde-family-texas-house-meeting-b2106232.html

Seriously?

The parents are not allowed to sit in these meetings to get an explanation why this happened and keeps happening.

Typical Right wing cowardice!

It appears the the school district’s police chief has been sanctioned…..

The Uvalde school district’s police chief was put on leave Wednesday following allegations that he erred in his response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School last month. Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell said that he put Pete Arredondo on administrative leave and that another officer would assume the embattled chief’s duties. In a statement, Harrell did not give a reason for removing Arredondo, the AP reports, but he said it remains unclear when district officials will know the outcome of the investigation into the shooting.

Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a state Senate hearing on Tuesday that Arredondo—the on-site commander—made “terrible decisions” as the massacre unfolded on May 24 and that the police response was an “abject failure.” Arredondo has said he didn’t consider himself in charge of the response to the shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed.

This situation continues to unfold and the answers are not showing any competence as law enforcement officers.

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are Kidding Me?

I have been a political watcher for many years and I thought I had seen everything stupid when Trump put in Spicer as Press Secretary……then he, Trump, install that Huckabee female……and then things got really weird when Trump gave the Press job to this one woman, Kayleigh McEnany, it pushed the dispensing of BS to a whole new level.

Her most recent piece to total moronic logic is the piece about the push to re-open schools.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany argued Thursday that “science is on the side” of President Trump’s push to fully reopen schools this fall. McEnany cited a study in JAMA Pediatrics that found “severe illness is less frequent” in child coronavirus patients. She said it showed that COVID-19 poses “far less” risk to children than seasonal flu, the Hill reports. “The science is on our side here, and we encourage for localities and states to just simply follow the science, open our schools.” McEnany said keeping schools closed is “very damaging,” because “there is a lack of reporting of abuse, there’s mental depressions that are not addressed, suicidal ideations that are not addressed when students are not in school.”

“Our schools are extremely important, they’re essential, and they must reopen,” she said. McEnany also said “the science should not stand in the way” of reopening, a remark which was reported out of context by numerous outlets and then retweeted by several Democratic lawmakers, leading the Washington Examiner to accuse the press of selectively editing McEnany’s remarks to “make her sound like a knuckle-dragging flat-earther.” CNN‘s Dr. Sanjay Gupta notes that while studies have consistently shown that the risk of children getting very sick from the coronavirus is relatively low, how much of a role they play in community transmission of the virus is still an “open question.”

She is a knuckle dragging flat-earther…..if she believes that “science should not stand in the way”.

There is NO one but a complete idiot that believes that the opening of schools will be safe.

In case anyone is interested…..3.6 million cases in the US and 139,000 deaths.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–14Apr20

We have heard all the reports of the deaths, shortages and lack of responses……and most schools are out and probably for the rest of the school year.

There is one sad stat that has come out of the virus…..no one is dying in schools from mass shootings…..

The nationwide lockdown to stem the rise of the coronavirus has had one silver lining—March 2020 was the first March since 2002 without a school shooting. 

“Depressing on mulitple levels,” said New York Times reporter Annie Karni.

Washington Post reporter Robert Klemko made the observation Monday morning on Twitter.

“Heartbreaking statistic,” tweeted the Wall Street Journal‘s Robbie

Whelan in reply.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/13/heartbreaking-statistic-thanks-pandemic-last-month-was-first-march-2002-without-us

A classic good news/bad news.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Protests And Then Some

Just when you thought the students protests were over……look and there they were yesterday……

A day already painful for gun control activists became even more so Friday when the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school massacre coincided with a shooting at a high school in Florida. One student at Ocala’s Forest High School suffered a non-life-threatening injury; the suspected shooter, identified as a male who is not a student at the school, was in custody, the Ocala Star Banner reports. It’s a scenario students across the country are already rallying against in coordinated walkouts Friday. More:

  • Origins:NPR reports Connecticut teenager Lane Murdock came up with the idea for the walkout upon learning of the deaths in Parkland, Fla. “I thought, originally, it would just be my school but, obviously, it’s grown,” the 16-year-old tells CNN. Students at more than 2,500 schools across the US were taking part. It grew out of this petition.
  • A test: The National School Walkout “will be a test for the staying power of this new wave of activism,” per Vox. Student leaders vow they won’t let fading headlines stop the movement
  • The goals: Unlike school walkouts earlier this year, this one is to last a full day, per the New York Times. One common theme: 13 seconds of silence to honor the 13 killed at Columbine. The walkout’s stated aims are to “hold elected officials accountable,” to advocate “solutions to gun violence,” and to promote political engagement.
  • Celebrity help: The Washington Post reports Robert DeNiro has penned a letter for students who need help getting out of class. “By bringing awareness of the tragic consequences of gun violence, and influencing out leaders to pass sensible gun laws, our communities and schools will become safer,” it reads.
  • Teacher remembers: At NPR, longtime Columbine teacher Paula Reed discusses the 1999 massacre, as well as this year’s school shooting in Parkland. “I came completely freakin’ unhinged,” she says of the Florida rampage. “It was too close to ours.”
  • ‘Enough’: Meanwhile, the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune has arranged the names of people killed on school campuses in the US in the last 20 years to spell “Enough.” “Please take the time to read these 223 names. Be sad. Be outraged,” it says.

The students refuse to do what Congress always does…….they refuse to rollover……..

These students refuse to go away.  Ignore these students at your own peril….these young people are becoming a force to be reckoned with….

Time for me to push away from the PC and do anything else….have a good day my friends…..chuq

“Under Pressure”

By now the world has witnessed the protests being lead by students of the school last visited by gun violence…….too many are bad mouthing the students for their activism even to the point of claiming that they are puppets or even actors….

One FOX anchor person even went so far to try and bully a 17 year old…..it backfired miserably (but what can you expect from anyone on FOX)…in case your nose picking got in the way of your current events…

Laura Ingraham offered an apology to Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg Thursday—after multiple major advertisers heeded his call to pull their ads from her Fox News show. Hogg, who has become a prominent gun-control advocate since the mass shooting, called for the boycott after Ingraham taunted him for “whining” about being rejected from colleges, the New York Times reports. “On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland,” Ingraham tweeted Thursday, inviting the 17-year-old to appear on her show.

At least nine advertisers have announced their intention to boycott Ingraham’s show, including TripAdvisor, Nestle, Hulu, Wayfair, Nutrish, and Stitch Fix, reports the Hill. “In our view, these statements focused on a high school student cross the line of decency,” TripAdvisor said. Hogg rejected Ingraham’s apology, noting that it was only issued after advertisers started pulling out. “I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight,” he tweeted. “It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.” The Washington Post notes that the episode shows the Parkland survivors have power “not just in organizing rallies but in spurring corporate America to act.”

BTW in about 24 hours she lost 4 sponsors and she offered an apology…but it was a typical Right Wing apology….tried to toot their horn and not a heart felt apology just trying to save their butts…did she mean her apology?  Only to the point that her career would suffer….so NO not sincere.

When I saw this and read the news I immediately thought of the Queen song…..

The grand kids of the 70’s protesters…..so activism must be like male baldness….skips a generation…..

The vile response of Right Wingers to these kids has me worried for their safety……in the same thought I am proud of their activism.

Some even claim some protesters want to kill gun owners…..

A Republican state lawmaker in North Carolina claimed this week that speakers at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. on March 24 — many of them shooting Parkland shooting survivors — wanted to “murder” gun owners. She provided no evidence to support her outlandish accusation.

“They’re out to take your guns, and our freedoms,” State Rep. Beverly Boswell wrote in a Facebook post on Monday, above a photo of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Tyra Hemans and Emma Gonzalez, who lived through a mass shooting at their school last month that left 17 people dead.

My time is nigh…..sorry had to wax poetic……be well, be safe….hope to see you guys tomorrow….chuq

PS:  After I wrote this draft news has been leaked that Laura will take next week off from her gig on FOX.  Is she being punished or is she going into hiding to wait this storm out?

Plus the total number of lost sponsors has hit a dozen probably more by now…..

Corporal Punishment

A Sunday of lots of rain so the garden is out of the question without a slicker…..but what crops I have planted can use the water….

I’m gonna step back in time……

When I was in high school I was a bit of a trouble maker….I was a member of a group called the Red Tidal Discussion Group…..we protested that our history book was printed in 1942 and not updated….we lead a sit-in in protest of no black history classes and I lived in Mississippi in the 1960’s….enough about my earlier years…needless to say that punishment in those days was a good paddling…or what they call ‘corporal punishment’ these days….I visited “coach” several times for he was our disciplinarian……5 whacks per offense we had to remove our wallets and anything else we had in our pockets so the full impact could be appreciated (sarcasm)…..by my junior year I had lost count of the trips to “Coach”……

I bring this up because of something I read about the students that recently walked out of class to protest the deaths of 17 students in the most recent school shooting…..

I seems that some things die hard in the South….Arkansas will deal out corporal punishment to those students that walked out of class….

Three students were punished for walking out of their Arkansas school Wednesday during the national protest against gun violence, and their punishment is now in the spotlight. Per ArkansasMatters.com, the Greenbrier Public Schools superintendent says the students never gave a heads-up so their school could prep for their demonstration, adding they were disciplined not for exercising their First Amendment rights, but for leaving class. Their choice of punishment, per the super: suspension or getting a parent-OK’d paddling. He wouldn’t say which punishment was selected, but the mom of one student did. On Wednesday, Jerusalem Greer tweeted that the kids “chose corporal punishment,” adding: “This generation is not playing around.” Her revelation soon went viral, with reactions ranging from calls to contact the ACLU to a horrified “Holy hell. Corporal punishment is still a thing in schools?!”

And that’s proven surprising to many, as, yes, many states do still allow it, though the exact number differs (it’s usually said to be 19). The Daily Beast reviewed Greenbrier’s school policy and found it stated physical punishment couldn’t be “excessive, or administered with malice”; an attempt to talk to the school’s assistant principal about the policy was met with a hang-up. Greer’s son, Wylie, told the Daily Beast his two “swats” didn’t hurt or cause any injury. He says he has “the utmost respect for all the adults involved,” as they were “merely doing their job,” though “the idea that violence should be used against someone who was protesting violence as a means to discipline them is appalling,” he noted. (Alabama paddled 19,000 kids in one school year.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/teens-face-corporal-punishment-in-rural-arkansas-for-participating-in-student-walkout

Too bad we cannot use corporal punishment on politicians…kinda like a public flogging….I know where I would bring…..you?

The South hangs on to their institutions from the past…statues and corporal punishment and a simmering racism…..

Closing Thought–08Mar18

The season of gun violence is upon us….since the beginning of the year there has been at least 2 dozen school shootings……my state has joined the growing list……

A student was fatally shot Wednesday at an Alabama high school, AL.com reports. The Birmingham City School system says the shooting happened during dismissal at Huffman High School. Two students and an employee were injured. One student is in critical but stable condition; the other died on the way to the hospital. According to the AP, police identified the dead student as a 17-year-old girl. Police initially described the shooting as “accidental,” though details are scarce, WVTM reports. “I was just hoping my baby was OK, that everybody was OK,” says one mother whose daughter was stuck inside the school when it was locked down. “I was nervous. This is so sad.”

Meanwhile, authorities in Mississippi are investigating a shooting Wednesday on the Jackson State University campus, Mississippi News Now reports. According to the Jackson Clarion Ledger, a student was shot in the leg inside a dorm and is expected to recover. One dorm resident says the student accidentally shot himself, though police haven’t confirmed that and the student hasn’t been forthcoming with details.

And I believe the first law on gun control has been passed in Florida…..it awaits the signature of the governor…..

Three weeks after a school shooting in Parkland left 17 dead, Florida lawmakers passed the state’s first gun-control legislation in over 20 years, USA Today reports. According to the AP, the bill passed Wednesday raises the legal age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and institutes a three-day waiting period on all gun sales. It also allows schools to arm some personnel, as long as they’ve completed law-enforcement training and their district is on board. Other portions of the bill ban bump stocks, create mental health programs for schools, and more. The legislation passed the House 67-50 with mixed support from both Republicans and Democrats. It narrowly passed the Senate on Monday, Reuters reports.

The bill includes some of the measures advocated for by survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School but left out one major demand: a ban on assault-style weapons of the kind used in the shooting. However, the dads of two Parkland victims supported the bill, saying it got enough right to be worth passing. The legislation will become law in 15 days unless vetoed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who hasn’t revealed whether or not he’ll do so. He has said in the past he doesn’t support arming teachers.

Arming school employees is a lame attempt to appear to be responsible……the age thing is a pretty good idea….the waiting period is another pretty good idea…..

These days there are two things that we bloggers can write about without much thought…..the antics of the Trump White House and gun violence…..shall we move on?

Oh well….time to flip off the MSM and call it a day….TTFN….chuq

Closing Thought–26Feb18

The big news today is the school shooting last week…but this time it is not the gun debate that is making the news but rather the action of some of the law enforcement dudes that showed up at the school….

The school resource officer said to have waited outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the Feb. 14 shooting that left 17 dead may not have been alone. The Sun-Sentinel reports Coral Springs police officers say several deputies from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office also waited outside the school in Parkland, Florida, during the shooting instead of going inside to confront the shooter or help injured students and teachers. Police sources tell CNN that officers arrived at the school to find three deputies with their guns drawn standing behind their vehicles. The officers then entered the school on the direction of the deputies. Sources say the officers were upset the deputies already on the scene didn’t follow them inside.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel says the allegations from three officers were brought to him by the Coral Springs police chief. “If we find out, as we did with Peterson, that our deputies made mistakes and didn’t go in, I’ll handle it like I always have,” he tells the Sun-Sentinel. Israel suspended school resource officer Scot Peterson, who then retired, earlier this week. The sheriff’s office says it will interview the officers who complained about the deputies’ actions, and officials are reviewing footage to corroborate the allegations. Skip Campbell, the mayor of Coral Springs, says if the allegations are true, “it not only makes me angry, it makes me furious.”

If this report is accurate then there is a special place in Hell for those that did not enter and confront the shooter….they could have saved lives…now they will have to live with the shame.

I must say TTFN and that I shall return tomorrow with more stuff……chuq