Commission on School Safety: Hear No Guns; See No Guns; Speak No Guns; Write No Guns.
An excellent and thorough article in the LA Times on August 7, by Eliza Fawcett, exposes the carefully orchestrated actions of the Federal Commission on School Safety to avoid discussing gun control in any shape or form. Even in my legally uneducated mind, this is a clear violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing free speech rights, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. If you invite a hundred speakers, but do not allow a leading gun control group to speak, namely, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, you are violating free speech by not allowing the many members of that group to express their views through the group’s leaders.
This is especially ironic, since one of the four members of the Commission is Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The Brady Campaign was started after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, on March 30, 1981, in which President Reagan, Press Secretary James Brady, Timothy McCarthy, and Thomas Delahanty were wounded. Brady suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled, and died in 2014 from his injuries. Reagan had a broken rib, a punctured lung, and serious internal bleeding, but recovered. The assassin, John Hinckley Jr was mentally disturbed, and should never have been in possession of a gun. This is exactly the scenario that happens in many school shootings. It is ABSURD for the head of Homeland Security not to be sensitive to the implications of gun ownership in these cases.
That attack took place 37 years ago. That was a full 9 Presidential terms. We still are facing the same issues.
The LA Times article exposes the essentially NRA’s Trumpian Wall around the hearings to censor allowed speakers, to omitting gun control 5 minute speeches in the record, and the lack of the cabinet members’ attending meetings. The Commission has become a Sham, run by Sham cabinet members, in service to their Sham President. The other members of the Commission are Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
Laws to prevent gun possession until age 21, limiting magazine size, limiting semi-automatic weapons, taking guns from those with mental problems, requiring gun safes or locks in households with minors, requiring fingerprint locks on guns, and requiring universal background checks can all prevent such tragedies. The growing rate of teen suicides can also be prevented by these measures.
As the title of this article suggests, it is ABSURD for the Administration’s single Commission on School Safety to ignore the obvious semi-automatic, 150 round magazine, bump stock equipped, unlocked, un-background checked, taken by a minor with an incredulously long string of mental problems and police calls, gorilla in the room.
