Students Demanding Gun Control

Today as hundreds of thousands of students and their families march for #GunSanityLaws in Washington, DC an even greater number of students and family are doing the same in hundreds of cities across the nation and around the world. The numbers will ultimately total in the million plus range.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was the site of a mass murder spree by a lone white former student with an AR-15 rifle.  While a weapon which is used to assault is by definition an "assault weapon" proponents of unrestricted gun sales impotently point out the AR-15 is not an Assault Rifle.   It is worthy of being pointed out the AR-15 is the murder weapon of choice by mass shooters who are defined by the characteristics: Male, White and Young.  Yeah, there are some middle-aged shooters but still they are white males.

The NRA has mounted its propaganda campaign in support of the gun manufacturer and tout the absolute necessity of owning such weapons to protect self and family. The mount their lame 2nd Amendment ascertains the Constitution grants them the absolute right to own and carry any and all weaponry anywhere all of the time.  They also denigrate the school students who are the source of the motivation for this march. Students have been bullied, bad-mouthed, threatened and punished for their stand on this issue by the NRA, the NRA public and the school systems where the children attend classes.

Some of the NRA-sponsored rhetoric circles around how the far-left media are using the children as pawns to further their liberal agenda of disarming America.  Yes there is a continuing left-leaning agenda to make the country safer by reducing the ownership of guns rather than increasing it.  Yes those activist parties see a champion when he/she/they step out of the scenes of carnage declaring "Never Again." But are the children being exploited? 

Yes, they are being exploited by the NRA and manufacturers. They are expected to sit down and shut up while some disgruntled white male sprays them with rapid-fire AR-15 bullets.

No, the media is not exploiting them. There is a fully willing collaboration taking place which serves to make the children's lives safer even at the cost of gun manufacturer profits.
One of the biggest fear-factors of the NRA is a generation of pre-voting age citizens becoming eligible to vote by November 2018.

These children reach the milestone of first adulthood rights. Voting. They have not been co-opted by incessant NRA and far-right propaganda. While older voters may be voting for their philosophy, the students are voting for their lives.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

When America was being formed and the wise men of that time got together they designed a system of governance where the people appointed men (yeah only men) to get together to make and alter the rules of society and the common good. Part of the idea was that every (qualified) citizen would and should at one time or another do his civic duty and become one of those appointed representatives.

The process was one where each adult male of European descent would cast his one vote to decide which candidate or other would best represent their region of the Republic. After those early successful years everything went haywire. (Note: when one mis-handles a coil of baling wire it can energetically become an un-mitigatable tangle of surprising complexity. Mostly you just toss it out and go get another coil of haywire. Hence the name.)

In more recent decades, the elected representatives have become lifers in the comfort of their positions. Not only have they voted themselves great annual salaries, incredible fringe benefits and time off to ostensibly go home to their constituents and local office and continue the job for which they were appointed. Along the way they discovered that they knew what was coming in the way of regulations (or the removal thereof) and could profit from that knowledge. They developed the mindset they could write legislation which impacted the Everyman while exempting themselves and granting special privileges.

All of them are the equivalent of being the hired help of We The People except that they have taken over. The constituents used to tell their representative what they wanted them to do, what they wanted and needed, how to protect them from the reversal of fortunes in the weather, the economy, the relationship with neighbors and neighboring nations. Where that used to be the way, now the representatives tell the people what they are allowed to have. Representatives used to represent all of their constituents. Now they have developed the idea they at best represent only the citizens who voted FOR them. They have reached a place where non-citizens residents and voters who voted for another candidate do not matter and actually should be denied representation.

In light of the more recent shift in parliamentary procedure and Citizen United (a highly misleading nomenclature) they have come to represent only moneyed interests who pay them to vote for legislation as written by other paid interests. If those interests were promoting laws and permissions that benefitted human constituents, it would not be such a bad thing, but the moneyed interests are always buying permissions and prohibitions which benefit their business model and bottom-line.

With the reversal of employer-employee relationships, it is as though the Inmates Have Taken Over the Asylum. The totally delusional patients have assumed the roles of Institutional Director, Head Nurse, Strong-arm Orderlies, Groundskeepers, etc. while the former staff are kept locked up in the basement along with the weak and feeble-minded patients who did not have a place in the New Administration.

There are genuinely earnest inmates who believe the new Administration is legitimate and will say and do everything they are asked to do. There are many inmates who are too scared to resist. They kowtow to the Authority of a Nurse Ratched knowing she will prevail by hook and crook.

Somewhere along the line, a tipping point was reached in the administration of governance where the hired help (Representatives and Senators) took over and now run the operation as THEY see fit. In many cases they have created their personal fiefdoms and command the loyalties of a sufficient number of constituents to negate the influence of the majority. That majority must resist and fight back or allow the consolidation of power by the Inmates who took over.