Socially bankrupt would be a reasonable description of the U.S.’s stand on gun control. A report in the Huffington Post reported that a school district in Texas has sent a note home to parents requiring them to note all distinctive marks on their children’s bodies, front and back, on the form provided; markings such as moles, scars birthmarks etc.
Why on earth would they do that, you may well ask?
The answer apparently is that the school district wants to have those identifying marks on record so that they can identify children’s bodies in the case of shootings, explosions or any other type of massacre or attack.
What have we come to? A socially bankrupt society hardly covers it. I think this reflects what amounts to the most flagrant abuse of human rights, child protection and societal responsibility imaginable. It says that the gun lobby is more important than our children’s lives.
The Huffington Post report references a mother who received this notice from her 7-year-old’s hand when she returned from school one day recently: The mother had already complied with an order at the beginning of the school year that all kids’ backpacks should be transparent. She told the reporter, “I refuse to believe, or accept, that clear backpacks, active shooter drills, and law enforcement programs to help identify children’s disfigured or dismembered bodies are really the best we can do – the best we can offer our kids.”
I have to say here that this situation makes a complete, hypocritical mockery, of the U.S.’s worldwide stance on human rights. They can’t even guaranty those for their own children. Isn’t it about time we started acting like the civilized country we all think we are? No wonder the parts of the world that are notorious for human rights abuses, like China, basically give us the finger when we criticize them. They have every right to do so. We are a socially bankrupt society!
The Texas mother’s final comment to the reporter is a great siren call to action, “My rage knows bounds, and I’ll carry it with me to the ballot box.”
The old phrase of “Best politicians money can buy” is no truer anywhere in U.S. politics than it is in the arena of gun control. The NRA, since it became a guns rights institution, has consistently bought every politician it can find who might have some influence over gun control legislation. It has spent millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars to promote a right which is actually not guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. As I’ve said many time before in these blogs, the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms AS PART OF A DULY CONSTITUTED STATE MILITIA. The NRA has twisted that phrase to include semi-automatic weapons, which didn’t exist when the Constitution was written, and has persuaded many state legislatures to drop the part of the phrase above in capital letters from their state constitutions.
The NRA and its supporters should be brought to trial in court, even in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, for severe human rights abuses.
I would like to suggest that the Texas mother’s battle cry, above, should be the beginning of a nationwide campaign by the only group that could be, at the same time, united, a majority, and strong…..“Mothers of America”. “Mothers of America” could vote anyone out of office who did not back strict gun control laws in all states and the federal government. Women are in the majority in U.S. population statistic. For god sake, use that power!
How can we possibly think of ourselves as civilized when we put outdated, and fictitious, U.S. Constitutional rights ahead of our human rights and, even worse, ahead of the survival rights of our children?
It’s unconscionable, hypocritical, pathetic and, in a civilized society, criminal.
