Eighth Graders Presented With Ballistic Shields for Backpacks at Graduation Ceremony. Here’s Why This is Ridiculous.
Isa
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It what could only be explained as a dramatic and passive agressive move by left-leaning school administrators who refuse to address the root cause of gun violence (spolier: it’s not the Second Amendment), a class of eighth graders were presented with kevlar shield inserts to place in their backpacks as a “graduation gift.”
“Why not go the full monty and hand out the Kevlar and body armor? After all, safety first — if it can save just one child, it’s well worth it. Right? Seriously, it’s one thing if parents buy this for their kids. But a widespread distribution at a school ceremony? Seems a bit much — a bit hysterical,” muses Washington Times contributor Cheryl Chumley.
This move also, of course, emboldens the narrative on the left of the supposed horrific reality in which our nation’s school children now live. It’s not the worst idea in the world in and of itself, of course; hundreds of thousands of concealed carry permit holders are prepared at all times to defend themselves against threats of violence, why shouldn’t we do what we can to protect the lives of children?
But the term “band-aid on a bullet wound”, said with the complete absence of an intended pun, doesn’t even come close to describing what kind of solution this is to gun violence in schools.
It would be a failure not to mention that school shootings are actually in a decline, although, again, it is still perfectly reasonable for adults to look for ways to prepare students for the unthinkable, even if it may not be inevitable.
Chumley says, though, that we wouldn’t have to prepare in this way “if only adults would address the real roots of violent crime and shootings, instead of going after the inanimate objects and the Second Amendment.”
“After all, school shootings aren’t due to guns,” she explains (my emphasis.) “They’re due to the mental instability and/or godlessness of the shooter. And that’s due to the failure of parents to raise their kids in healthy homes that aren’t broken; in safe homes that are guided by the word of God; and with solid starts in life that don’t lead down a path of reliance on Ritalin or some other stimulant or drug with oft-devastating side effects that include, get this, depression and thoughts of violence.”
So as long as we’re putting bulletproof inserts into backpacks instead of addressing the much deeper and more significant factors behind the prevalence of school shootings, we’re not going to get anywhere.
“Once again, that’s just whacking at a mole. So-called bulletproof backpacks may make the administrators feel as if they’re doing something to secure their charges. But all it’s really doing is creating an image of safety — a fake image that has nothing to do with the realities or roots of violence.”
That’s a pretty good metaphor for how gun control works, too…
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