Skip to main content

And That's How The Fight Started.....



It all started out innocuously enough....or so I thought.

The idea was to create a meme....a thought provoking meme on the issue of school safety vis a vis gun safety reform. I won't call it gun control any longer for several reasons, not the least of which is the word 'control' has become a lightning rod in this ongoing debate. And, control really is an illusion when one comes right down to it.

But I digress.

The meme was intended to help demonstrate my belief that gun violence, and the singular focus thereon, can have a harmful effect on school safety efforts overall because gun safety reform efforts are so predominant nationally....especially given the recent spike in gun violence incidents nationally. That includes in, or near, schools, too.

Here's the meme:


The meme was shared on several social media pages and in several groups.

And that's how the fight started.....

The pushback was pretty intense, and it was immediate. It came primarily from, how shall I say this tactfully, 'radical' individuals who push for bans on all guns.

There was one private group I finally decided to leave as a result. The pushback was pretty nasty in that one! Anything that didn't conform to their views on guns, or bans thereof, was roundly vilified and condemned.

  • How DARE you posit that a focus on gun safety reform might harm school safety efforts! The NERVE!!!
  • BAN ALL GUNS!
  • Get this kind of crap out of this forum!!! ADMINS!!!! Delete this post!!!
  • I'm not sure you HAVE a mind to change!

And those are just a few of the 'nicer' responses.

I discovered the hard way that that group's members are much like 'radical' members of pro-gun advocacy groups only from the opposite end of the spectrum. Both sides rarely, if ever, seek open dialogue on the subject of gun violence prevention. Nor do they truly understand school safety that well, if at all. It's either their way or the highway, so to speak. In this instance with this group, I finally had enough and chose the highway.

Still licking my wounds, as it were.

Frankly, I was surprised at the lack of civility in the pushback. I expect that from the more radical pro-gun advocates. I did not expect it from pro-gun violence prevention advocates.

Guess I'm still too naïve, even at 72 years of age.

But, again, I digress.

And that's when a friend of mine on Facebook from 'Down Under' (that's Australia for those who might not get the reference), a subject matter expert in risk management by the name of John Salter, weighed in with these words of wisdom:

Truer words of wisdom might be hard to find.

So, where am I going with this? 

I created a poll on Twitter to help ME see if I was on the right track.

After the poll ended, the results, although not overwhelming and certainly not scientific by any stretch of anyone's imagination, pretty much confirmed my premise that gun safety reform can have a harmful effect on school safety efforts:


How so, you ask? 

Well, the first two choices are big picture activities when it comes to school safety that can, and should, include the other two issues as COMPONENTS of those school safety activities. The second two choices are, as stated, components of school safety. They should never be the singular focus of school safety. Not EVER!

The majority of participants in this poll jumped immediately to gun safety related issues, as did members of the group I mentioned earlier in this blog post, when the words 'school safety' were presented; ergo, my assertion that gun safety reform CAN have a harmful effect on school safety efforts if those gun safety reform issues take center stage and stay there.

I rest my case.

So, as stated in the meme that started this kerfuffle in the first place, Change My Mind.

My two cents....


* Comments on this blog are moderated.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RIP Anne Marie

  Anne Marie Hochhalter Born December 19, 1981 Died February 16, 2025 Hero Courageous Fighter Fiercely Independent Survivor Advocate Victim Following her death on February 16, 2025, all of the above adjectives have been used to describe who my daughter, Anne Marie Hochhalter, was. Thing is, I never saw her as such. I saw her as my daughter, my first-born child. She will always remain so. Please don't get me wrong. I do believe some of those accolades listed above must have, in fact, applied to Anne Marie. Otherwise, so many people would not be using them to describe their own knowledge of who she was. I just never got to see them or experience them with her as they applied to her at least from December 2009 until her death. I wasn't allowed to (more on that later). There were snippets here and there in media stories, but that was all I got to experience of her activities. But I digress. As most folks already know, Anne Marie was critically injured during the Columbine massacre....
6 comments
Read more

A "Logical Fallacy" Extraordinaire!

The below graphic has been circulating on pro-gun sites for quite awhile now, at least since 2011. I've seen it pop up in different variations many times since then. I'm  sharing it here for one reason, and one reason only: to try to illustrate something known as a logical fallacy.  Numerical statistics can be both a blessing and a curse especially when they're being used as justification for illustrating one's point of view.....in this case doing nothing when talking about, and discussing possible remedies for gun violence in this country. If this is all we are willing to look at, then woe is us. Maybe we need to start calling them illogical truths. I don't know. It's frustrating. By looking at the graphic we can obviously infer what the message is - do nothing because the number of fatalities by assault style weapons is smaller than anything else and pretty minuscule when compared against both drunk drivers and malpractice deaths. So many gun rights...
7 comments
Read more

Arm Teachers? Let's Make Them 'Emergency Management Specialists' Instead

DO SOMETHING! A refrain used all too often following most mass school shootings. Do something ! Simple. Straightforward. Succinct Easily understood. Because that refrain is used so often following most mass school shootings, it then must also logically follow that there’s an ongoing problem with school safety, right? Are our schools as safe as they can be? It seems a whole lot of people think their schools are NOT safe and that nothing is being done to make them as safe as they need to be! But is that perception accurate? Well, yes and no. Arguably, one of the bigger problems I see with school safety is that when a mass school shooting happens, it’s become ‘normal’ for these incidents to dominate the 24-hour news cycle for a much shorter time than they used to. Please don’t get me wrong. They still garner a whole lot of ‘thoughts and prayers’, but usually for a much shorter period of time. The reality is they simply don’t get the same level of ongoing attention they used to. I should k...
3 comments
Read more