A pit bull in every classroom by @BloggersRUs

A pit bull in every classroom

by Tom Sullivan

The White House yesterday hosted an emotionally charged meeting billed as a "listening session" with survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shootings. The sitting president clutched staff notes that reminded him to say, "I hear you." Not surprising for a man who needs the number of his presidency monogrammed on his cuff.

President Donald Trump holds notes during a White House listening session with students and parents affected by school shootings. (AP Photo by Carolyn Kaster) pic.twitter.com/Z0lZbSVaoF
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) February 21, 2018

President Trump suggested arming teachers, presumably because having pit bulls in classrooms would be irresponsible. Trump mentioned the football coach slain in the attack, saying, “If he had a firearm he wouldn’t have had to run, he would’ve shot and that would’ve been the end of it.”

Trump's political development seems to have stopped sometime around the beginning of the Reagan administration. So it is not surprising that he reaches for an idea similar to one Archie Bunker proposed over 40 years ago.

CNN last night hosted a town hall where more students from Stoneman Douglas confronted Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson and Rep. Ted Deutch on addressing spree shootings.

The Hill:

The father of one of the students killed in the shooting at a Florida high school confronted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over his statements in the wake of the attack, calling his and President Trump’s statements “incredibly weak.”

“When I like you, you know it. When I'm pissed at you, you know it. Your comments this week and those of our president have been pathetically weak,” Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed, said at a CNN town hall Wednesday.

The cheers were deafening. There were lots of boos for Rubio. But pressed, Rubio eventually agreed he could support raising the minimum age for buying weapons, that he would reconsider regulation of magazine size, and that he supported gun violence restraining orders that allow family members to petition the court for removing a person's access to firearms. Rubio got credit for just showing up before a tough crowd. Still, these are modest moves.

But E.J. Dionne's commentary written before both events addresses a big obstacle in the way of safer schools, concerts, and churches:

And as the mass killings continue, we are urged to be patient and to spend our time listening earnestly to the views of those who see even a smidgen of action to limit access to guns as the first step toward confiscation. Our task is not to fight for laws to protect innocents, but to demonstrate that we really, honestly, truly, cross-our-hearts, positively love gun owners and wouldn’t for an instant think anything ill of them.

What is odd is that those with extreme pro-gun views — those pushing for new laws to allow people to carry just about anytime, anywhere — are never called upon to model similar empathy toward children killed, the mourning parents left behind, people in urban neighborhoods suffering from violence, or the majority of Americans who don’t own guns.

They never carry notes reminding them to say they hear us. Instead, they question the motives of those who want stricter control of firearms. Gun fanatics create conspiracy theories about opponents being controlled by dark, anti-American forces. George Soros is always in there somewhere.

The National Review's Ben Shapiro maligned students as not developmentally mature enough to have adult conversations about adult topics such as whether they have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of surviving third period. Shapiro wrote, "Children and teenagers are not fully rational actors. They’re not capable of exercising supreme responsibilities. And we shouldn’t be treating innocence as a political asset used to push the agenda of more sophisticated players."

“Their sorrow can very easily be hijacked by left-wing groups who have an agenda,” former representative Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) told CNN. “Do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?”

No, independent-minded, fully rational actors would suggest arming everyone in schools and on airplanes. But not with pit bulls. That would be irresponsible.

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