Important headlines for March 30th
Bottom Line: These are stories you don't want to miss and my hot takes on them...
Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas students want the movement to include their voices too - Miami Herald
Excerpt: Eleven percent of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s 3,000 students are black, but you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage of the school’s horrific mass shooting in February or the gun control movement that sprung up in the aftermath. Black students gathered in Parkland Wednesday said they felt overlooked and underrepresented by both the media and their peers leading the charge for more gun control. And some of the solutions meant to keep them safer in the wake of a gunman slaughtering 17 of their classmates leave them feeling more afraid than before.
Hot Take: In a separate story today, I detail the human trafficking epidemic in this country that we almost never see or hear about in the media. Unless those who go missing fit the profile of what they want to perpetuate. The point is that there's very much institutionalized prejudice along racial lines. This is but yet another example. The media is quick to play the race game if it can make a police officer and/or department look bad but not so quick when there are teens that fit their preferred profile who're attempting to advance their own political wishes for gun control. Kudos to the Herald for even covering this angle. Don't expect the national media to pay attention. These kids don't have blond hair and blue eyes.
I Backed Gun Control in High School. Now I've Joined NRA Chad Greene, Federalist
Hot Take: As I mentioned earlier this week. All teenagers think they know more than they do, and all productive adults learn and grow with life and maturity that's simply not possible at 17 or 18. I also mentioned that some of these student activists might even learn to regret their current actions and political advocacy. I know I'm a vastly different person politically and otherwise compared to my 18-year-old self. Ignorance can be fixed with information.
I'm not a betting person but I'd be willing to bet almost any sum that there isn't a single Parkland protesting student who knows all of these facts:
More lives are saved by defensive use of guns that taken by them
There are more than 2 million successful uses of defensive force using guns per year
18 states prior to Florida allowed teachers to carry on campus
There's never been a murder attributed to a teacher carrying on campus
576,000 teachers are either carrying on campus already or would like to be able to do so
Three times more lives are taken by knives than all rifles combined per year
But this movement was never about information or actual accountability was it?
Until Monday...