What happened in Parkland..? What happened in Broward County..? What happened in America..?

Like many people, when I first heard that the armed deputy who was assigned to MSDHS in Parkland did not enter the facility, I thought I was hearing about a complete coward, and then we all learned that three other deputies who arrived fairly early on also did not act.  Which made me think; one coward maybe, but four at the same time hearing shots fired and knowing that children inside desperately needed their help..?!  Not a chance..! 

But what else could it be..?  The only thing scarier than the answer to that question is the shooting itself.  With each passing day and new information the story gets worse.  It seems that Miami/Dade School District started a program in their schools a handful of years ago that required suspensions and arrests of all students be drastically reduced, and while that sounds good at a quick glance, the reality is that it is a complete sham.  A sham because the reduction did not come about as a result of improved behavior.  Far from it, instead it happened because the Miami/Dade School District and Sheriff’s Office decided to cook the books and respectively stopped suspending and arresting students and children of school age no matter what they did unless it was so egregious that they had no other choice.  An easily foreseeable free for all ensued.

Why would they do that, you might ask..?  One word; “money,” and lots of it.  You see, there is federal grant money available for lowering the rates of suspensions and arrests of students, and especially minority students.  This sham worked so well financially in Miami/Dade that apparently Broward Sheriff Scott Israel and the Broward County School District wanted a piece of the action and implemented it full bore. 

Then, just like in neighboring Miami/Dade, students who should have and would have been suspended and/or arrested under the old rules were simply slapped on the wrist and “counseled,” to the point that some of them were recruited by local “gangstas” who knew about the new program, to do crimes for them, thereby avoiding the risk of arrest themselves.

In case you haven’t figured it out or heard yet, Nicholas Cruz was among those who were “counseled” numerous times before finally being expelled and all the warnings signs of impending disaster were ignored because they still did not want to affect the low arrest numbers.  So this particular kid, bad as they certainly knew he was, was given a pass time after time by the BCSO and the FBI, (albeit for different reasons).

So that is most probably why at least three of the deputies didn’t react as we might expect.  Yeah, the SRO may have been a coward, but the rest may simply have been following the protocol of a corrupted system focused only on the bottom line of county finances and not considering the consequences.  But hey, at least BCSO won’t be accused of any sort of arrest profiling. 

Before I’m accused of trashing Law Enforcement and Cops, let me reinforce right here that as my regular readers know, I completely support our police and I know that the vast majority of them are doing a great job; however, this needs to be exposed and those responsible need to be brought to justice.

The climate in the highest levels of the BCSO, the School District., and County government was part and parcel to blame.  Bad kids are NOT slipping through the cracks, they are being walked through and hand fed by an insane system that refuses to punish criminal behavior, and puts everyone else at risk. 

The failures of that system, coupled with a complicit media and the overall disintegration of our culture, caused this incident..!  A corrupt sheriff and his office played a heavy role in this incident; and now many of the same people who caused it are playing on the raw emotions of a lot of uninformed people by pointing fingers at the NRA and a particular type of firearm..?!  Really..?! 

Not to mention that these same people want to chip away at the only way We the People have to defend ourselves when they have proven that at least in Broward and Miami-Dade they refuse get the job done for some grant money..?!  They would tell us to dial 911 and wait; for what, for them to arrive in time to clean up dead bodies and assess the crime scene..?!  The same Sheriff in Broward who gave a gun and a badge to a high ranking member of CAIR only a few years ago thinks he can somehow instill a sense of safety while not enforcing the law..?! 

Are they kidding..?!  Scarier still is that in spite of how badly this program has failed, many more jurisdictions around the country have either already adopted it or are preparing to. 

That, however is just one element, there is much more to it than that with a lot of contributing factors.  Some of the pieces are bigger than others, however they all need to be looked at and addressed.  Throwing another useless law or two at only one of the pieces of the puzzle will do nothing and it certainly won’t stop the next maniac who is almost certainly planning his/her attack somewhere as I write this.

So I decided to discuss the situation a little more in depth and point out that we have a lot of work to do.  While this is by no means an exhaustive list, I believe that I’ve touched on some of the more critical points.

For starters, I am not a member of the NRA and have not been for a long time, and I’ll tell you why. For the most part I have always liked and believe in what the NRA does and stands for, which in spite of what the anti-gun media would have you believe, is really to promote gun safety and the shooting sports while steadfastly protecting our most precious Constitutional Right, the 2nd Amendment. 

I might add, if not for them, we very well might have lost that right long ago.  Anyway, I used to sign up for annual memberships on occasion, but back in 2009 when they decided to put Harry Reid, one of the most despicable members of the US Senate ever, up on a pedestal because he showed up at a Las Vegas gun range with his shotgun, I decided to stop being a member.  That really pissed me and a lot of other members off, but at the end of the day, the NRA is no more responsible for school shootings or other gun related violence than the AAA is for people driving drunk or the AKC is for a dog biting someone. 

So yeah, I’m probably going to get over the “dirty Harry” thing and sign up again this week and by doing so, tell those companies trashing them that the boycott is on.

Where else might we look..?    Well, things have never been perfect, however I don’t see how anyone can look at our experiences since the early sixties and not recognize that things have gotten exponentially worse since, starting with the schools, we removed God, prayer, and morality from the public forum.  Not to mention that we started giving lots of misbehaviors fancy names and “correcting” them with mind numbing drugs.  On that point, ask yourself something, isn’t it just possible that if he/she was someone else’s child, you might just figure out that your “ADD” kid might really just be a lazy pain in the ass that needs a good old fashioned spanking or two…?!

And let’s not forget that we started murdering our most vulnerable and innocent in the name of convenience and choice, thereby cheapening life.  Coupled with that, we increased the extreme violence on the big screen, in our homes, and many video games which have the goals of things like rape, plunder, and murder.  Let’s not forget the countless broken homes where very often neither parent is really present and certainly not a dad.

But as usual, all we are hearing in the wake of this most recent tragedy are calls for more “gun control” measures, “reasonable” measures, and all of the same unworkable, tired rhetoric they always roll out.  I won’t even go into all of the reasons that gun control fails every time, but I will offer this, pointing a finger at the NRA and any particular gun holds no water at all as people have been killing other people since the dawn of time before guns were even dreamed of.

So instead of reopening a lot of those stale arguments, let’s try something different and start immediately replacing the “Gun Free Zone” signs with “Campus Protected By Armed Personnel” signs and depending upon the size of the campus, back it up with at least three trained vets and/or retired LEO’s who are not afraid to do whatever needs to be done, and let’s allow any teaching staff who are willing to carry their concealed weapons to do so.  The problem would virtually disappear over-night.  The current signs haven’t worked yet and they only broadcast to any shooter that they will not be met with return fire.  To any who say they don’t want their children living in fear or attending a school that is more like a prison, I ask if you’d rather they continue to be like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery..?

At the same time, let’s stop programs that entice officials to cook the books and pretend that it doesn’t matter if criminals are lurking in the lobbies of our schools and begin punishing bad behavior with suspension and arrest, and jail time where warranted like we used to. 

We are never going to completely fix this, but we can take workable, proactive steps towards mitigating this slaughter.

My final thought for today is this: even if you don’t believe that prayer works, you should at least concede that it doesn’t hurt, and we could sure use it right now.

That's the way I see it anyway.