By a parent Erik Ronkin My daughter is a sophomore at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Wednesday, at 2:26 PM, she texted me to tell me the school was on a code red lockdown. For the next 2 hours I communicated with her while they waited in a closet in her classroom. We were actually lucky to be able to do so since the cell reception is really bad there and I had just a week earlier got her to use WhatsApp instead when at school. MSD has the Florida state champion marching band this year. Not too long ago, the whole community turned out at the school at midnight to welcome the band back after winning state. That champion band is now a little smaller. A freshman baritone player from my daughter’s section is one of the dead currently still in the 1200 building. A guard girl is one of the ones who died at the hospital. Another girl from band we have known since middle school jazz band days was shot in the leg and is in the hospital. There could be more. We have a band vigil today before the community vigil where we will likely find out. The kids are supposed to wear their shirts from their state program – the now ironically title Peace by Piece. The school is large and unbelievably well run. The whole campus is surrounded by chain link fence and has a moat on 2 sides. There are only 3 access points and only one is kept open during school hours. Security guards, usually coaches and vice administrators, patrol the campus in golf carts and watch every entrance. There are security cameras. There is a police officer in a marked squad car at the only entrance open during the day. They drill for emergencies. They use Twitter, auto-dialers, email and text to communicate. In short, the school is about as safe as you can make a large high school short of sending your kids to jail. We have heard people say we should be arming the teachers. One of our teachers had a great response to this. The county doesn’t provide basic school supplies but somehow is going to find the budget for guns and training. This is a very affluent community. People move to this area to go to MSD. The reason this school is so good is every parent buys supplies for the school, donates equipment to the school, and volunteers at the school. Kids whose parents can’t afford it are covered by the community. Current school budgets already put a great strain on the altruism of these teachers. I don’t think turning them into armed guards would help at all. Hopefully next year’s school supply list won’t include bullets. We keep hearing this “if you see something say something thing.” People said something. No one did anything about it. We have heard from his teachers who reported his problematic behavior since kindergarten. Not a single person who interacted with him is shocked. Every single kid in the school knew exactly who committed the murders before being told. He worked at the dollar store next to the movie theater where the kids all go to buy candy before the movies. We have heard some kids say they used to avoid the place if he was the only cashier. He was expelled for having weapons on campus and for fighting with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. He was on everyone’s radar. And yet he was able to buy an assault rifle and pass a background check. When we moved to this area, you would have to go a long ways to find a store that sold handguns. Now there are stores within a couple of miles of MSD that sell you as many AR-15’s you can afford as long as you pass a background check. No permit needed. We must need this kind of firepower for the safest city in Florida. The killer entered the senior parking lot entrance as it was opened at the end of the school day. We have heard he killed the security guard there. He knew the schedule. He had attended the school. He knew the drills. The building he shot up is the first one he could get to. The police responded lightning fast. They responded from everywhere. The senior management of many tri-country police departments live in the area and send their kids to this school. This event needed to be stopped before it started. I keep hearing the people on the news say this event is all too familiar, but for me the familiarity extends to the scene of the crime. I’m sure we will hear for a least a day or two more about how terrible this all was and how we need to do something and I’m sure that people’s personal politics will weigh heavy on what that thing we need to do is. But from a community standpoint, people here are clear on the basics. Our state and country failed us. I keep expecting the gun fetishists among us - including many of my friends - to come around. I am no longer suffering from this delusion. We need to come to grips with the fact that a large portion of our fellow citizen are sociopaths who value their guns more than our children and who think that the Bill of Rights consists of just one super amendment and nine suggestions. Unfortunately, they are loud and passionate sociopaths. We need to be louder and more passionate. We need to send these antisocial ideologies back to the tinfoil hat fringes where it belongs. Now is indeed the time. So here is the deal I want to cut. We get to keep and destroy all of your assault weapons and you get to keep your thoughts and prayers. ***** Addendum ***** When I wrote this, it was originally shared with only my friends. As requested, I made it public so people could share. My expectation when I did that was that I would have a far larger number people taking the side of the AR-15 over our children. I am humbled and overwhelmed by the depth and passion of support for what I wrote. And to all of you who want to see sanity return to our schools, churches, and streets, I say stay engaged, make sure you vote for candidates at home who will advocate for sane gun laws as passionately as you would, and donate to support candidates elsewhere in this country where sanity is less popular so that maybe we can make a dent in the strangle hold the gun lobby has on this country. Many gun owners reading this have been puzzled as to whether I am calling them all sociopaths. In short, no. I know many responsible gun owners who I would not label fetishists and sociopaths. One simple way to know if I'm talking about you would be to read this blog post - https://agingmillennialengineer.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/fuck-you-i-like-guns-2/ - from a veteran that was posted in the comments and if after you want to celebrate by going out and buying another child killing military weapon for your home, then yes, I am talking about you. I won't argue with you. This is a democracy. All we need to do is create a chorus of sanity loud enough to reduce your gun-addled screams to a whisper. If reading another long well written blog post is not your thing, here is a short quiz you can use to determine if you are a gun fetishist and a sociopath: When someone kills a large number of children using a military weapon, do you rush to the Internet to defend the rights of the weapon? When someone kills a large number of children using a military weapon, is your first thought that you hope there will be evidence of mental illness? (credit given if its your second thought with your first thought being please let is be a Muslim) When someone kills a large number of children using a military weapon, do you run out to buy more military weapons? When someone kills a large number of children using a military weapon, are you pre-armed with poorly sourced, easily debunked alternative facts in defense of your arsenal? When someone kills a large number of children using a military weapon, do you spend time correcting the terminology people use in describing the weapon? When someone kills a large number of children using a military weapon, do you like to bring up how the long dead founding fathers support your views? (Do you object to a standing army as strenuously as they would? Can you name any of them?) If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, I would highly recommend you do some serious soul searching. But who are we kidding, you are not capable of that. You would have to have one to be able to search it.
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