Don’t look
to Trump for leadership after the Florida school shooting
Richard
Wolffe
They say
there’s no one more optimistic than an American teenager. But now we’re
teaching them how to save their lives from a gunman
@richardwolffedc
Thu 15 Feb
2018 05.29 GMT Last modified on Thu 15 Feb 2018 05.48 GMT
Students
react following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida
‘Something else is dying with each massacre in
a school, church, night club, movie theater or at an open-air concert. What’s
dying is the bright light of our teenagers’ confidence.’ Photograph: Michele
Eve Sandberg/AFP/Getty Images
This is no
time to talk politics, we’re told by gun-loving conservatives.
This is a
time for prayers, we’re told by Donald Trump.
“There
really are no words,” we’re told by the local sheriff.
So it’s OK,
everyone. We can get back to the latest blather about tax cuts for corporations
or billions for a border wall. Those are the things that politics, and
presidents, and words, can handle.
But if we
can’t talk about saving the lives of our children, if our politics can’t keep
our schools safe, if we can’t talk about the mass murder of innocence, then
what on earth are we talking about? What’s the point of any politician if they
can’t do this one simple thing: protect our youngest citizens?
If this was
the eighth terrorist attack of 2018, don’t you think every member of Congress –
not just Democrats – would bleat on about taking urgent action? If
Isis-inspired gunmen had just mowed down 17 high school students in their
classrooms, how long would it take before our president spoke in front of the
nation’s TV cameras?
Instead,
we’ll have to settle for a tweet. Because when we need leadership the most,
there’s no point in raising your hopes with the man who watches Fox News all
day inside the White House.
“My prayers
and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida
shooting,” Trump wrote. “No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel
unsafe in an American school.”
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
My prayers
and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida
shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an
American school.
9:50 PM -
Feb 14, 2018
It’s so
heart-warming to hear this from the man who promised to end “this American
carnage” in his inaugural address. Of course, at the time he was talking about
gang murders, just as he did in his State of the Union address last month.
He must have
forgotten to mention school shootings with assault weapons, like the AR-15 used
at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. It was the
same assault weapon used at the Sutherland Springs Church in Texas in November.
It was the same assault weapon used in the Las Vegas massacre the month before
that.
It’s as if
no politician could talk about protecting airplane cockpits after 9/11 because
all we could was pray and send our condolences.
There have
been many attempts to tackle assault weapons like the AR-15. When Senator Diane
Feinstein, the California Democrat, tried to do that in 2013, one month after
the Sandy Hook school massacre, there were 60 “no” votes that killed the
effort, including those of 15 Democrats.
Among those
no votes was one Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, who told Fox News on
Wednesday that now wasn’t the time to talk about gun control. “I think you can
always have that debate,” he said. “But if you’re gonna have that debate about
this particular incident you should know the facts of that incident before you
run out and prescribe some law that you claim could have prevented it.”
Senator
Rubio: Save yourself the trouble. You don’t need to know the facts because the
last time you heard the facts, you voted against regulating the very gun that
massacred all those schoolchildren at Sandy Hook. It’s so funny how you need to
be 100% sure about the impact of gun control laws when you are prepared to
throw any amount of legislation and spending at the far less deadly terrorist
threat to the United States.
Rubio can
get away with this nonsense now, even more than he could in 2013. There were 20
children killed at Sandy Hook and America was shocked to its core. There were
17 children killed in Parkland, and by next week we’ll all just pretend it was
the cost of doing business.
Anyone who
knows a school-age child will tell you that lockdown drills are more common
than the duck-and-cover drills their grandparents practiced in case of nuclear
war. We are now teaching our children what to throw at a gunman in a last-ditch
attempt to save their lives. If that isn’t an abdication of our parental
duties, it’s hard to know what is.
For the
deeper, sadder truth is that something else is dying with each massacre in a
school, church, night club, movie theater or at an open-air concert. And yes,
with each gang bullet in Chicago too. What’s dying is the bright light of our
teenagers’ confidence.
They say
there’s no one more optimistic than an American teenager. That may always have
been a gross generalization. But there aren’t many countries where kids are
told they can grow up to be president, or a tech entrepreneur, a Nobel-prize
winning scientist, or join the Peace Corps to fix the world.
Now we’re
teaching them to throw their chairs if a shooter storms into their classroom.
We all just
spent the last several days celebrating the snowboarding achievements of two
17-year-old Olympic champions: Chloe Kim and Red Gerard.
Now we’re
mourning the senseless murders of Americans their age, at the hands of a gunman
who was only two years older.
It’s at
times like these that a normal president would step up to reassure the country
of its values and take action to protect its citizens. But we don’t have one of
those right now. This is the leader who took a whole week to say he was
“totally opposed to domestic violence” after his staff secretary quit, amid
accusations from his ex-wives of just that. Trump’s supposed condemnation came
after he heaped praise on the guy for his job in the White House, wished him
the best in his career, and suggested that he deserved “due process” against
all these allegations.
Donald
Trump doesn’t do moral values and he doesn’t do justice. That’s the cost of
doing business with a man who wanted the death penalty for five teenagers known
as the Central Park Five, and claimed they were guilty even after they were
exonerated by DNA evidence.
Enough is
enough is enough. If you care about our children, do something to protect them.
If you want a politician who talks about our greatest threats, vote for someone
who isn’t terrified of the National Rifle Association.
And if you
want to make America great again, make our schools safe again.
Richard
Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist
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