❝ …when a fire alarm went off inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and teachers began screaming “Code red!” as confused students ran in and out of classrooms, Delaney Tarr, 17, knew what to do. Run to the safest place in the classroom — in this case, a closet packed with 19 students and their teacher.
❝ “I’ve been told these protocols for years,” she said. “My sister is in middle school — she’s 12 — and in elementary school, she had to do code red drills.”
This is life for the children of the mass shooting generation. They were born into a world reshaped by the 1999 attack at Columbine High School in Colorado, and grew up practicing active shooter drills and huddling through lockdowns. They talked about threats and safety steps with their parents and teachers. With friends, they wondered darkly whether it could happen at their own school, and who might do it.
❝ Now, this generation is almost grown up. And when a gunman killed 17 people this week at Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., the first response of many of their classmates was not to grieve in silence, but to speak out. Their urgent voices — in television interviews, on social media, even from inside a locked school office as they hid from the gunman — are now rising in the national debate over gun violence in the aftermath of yet another school shooting.
Most of our politicians – both sides of the mythical aisle – are taking their guidance from pimps for the gun industry. Not the people who specialize in sporting firearms; but, the greedy bastards who’ve grown fat over decades of taxpayer money poured into the military-industrial complex. They found a whole new market in fear-bound gun buyers. People so afraid of someone taking away their assault rifles they buy another half-dozen every time the NRA says “BOO!”
Let’s see if the kids can do it! Can they shake up the lame-ass political creeps who feel their shorts expand into safe re-election mode when that annual check rolls in the door from the NRA?
“Students after Florida shooting: You’re either with us or against us” https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/us/florida-school-shooting/index.html Rush Limbaugh: We Need Concealed-Carry in Schools – ‘Bashing the NRA Isn’t Going to Do It’ http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/02/18/rush-limbaugh-fox-news-sunday-florida-school-shooting-stop-bashing-nra-concealed-carry (Michael Reagan says forget gun-control, put armed guards and teachers in schools https://www.dcourier.com/news/2018/feb/19/reagan-column-its-still-not-guns/ ) NJ GOP Candidate: FL Shooting Should Bring Call to ‘Return Prayer to the Classroom’ http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/02/17/florida-school-shooting-steve-lonegan-says-bring-prayer-classroom President Trump Lashes Out at Oprah and Russia Investigation in Tweet Storm as Nation Mourns http://time.com/5165448/donald-trump-russia-oprah-tweets/
Post-millennial ‘Generation Z’ (AKA: Centennials) is the largest on the planet, numbering 72 million and counting. Ages 25 and younger, they represent 25.9 percent of the population and by 2020 they will account for one-third.
“Florida school shooting: Gun law changes attract renewed GOP interest” (Fox News) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/19/florida-school-shooting-gun-law-changes-attract-renewed-gop-interest.html
Only five states have laws enabling family members, guardians or police to ask judges to strip gun rights temporarily from people who show warning signs of violence – Florida isn’t one of them. Supporters of these measures, called “red flag laws” or gun-violence restraining orders, say they can save lives by stopping some shootings and suicides. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/feb/18/just-a-few-states-have-gun-laws-targeting-threaten/
Facebook is already using A.I. to help predict when users may be suicidal https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/21/how-facebook-uses-ai-for-suicide-prevention.html Facebook has built up considerable AI talent and technology since 2013, when it established an AI research lab and hired prominent researcher Yann LeCun to lead it. The lab has created an impressive roster of new capabilities, including technology that recognizes objects in users’ photos, translates text posts into other languages and transcribes conversations in video ads.
https://resizing.flixster.com/SmbJUjaEK2GQr2olH_-bNvXztuo=/1920×1080/v1.bjs1NjEyODk7ajsxNzYwMTsxMjAwOzE5MjA7MTA4MA
For the weary White House, Florida shooting offered a ‘reprieve’ from scandals https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-the-weary-white-house-florida-shooting-offered-a-reprieve-from-scandals/2018/02/19/04293442-158a-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html?utm_term=.2fd58d91304d
“Massacre survivor rips Trump Jr. for boosting conspiracy theory” (NY Post 2/21/18) https://nypost.com/2018/02/21/florida-massacre-survivor-im-not-an-actor/ Florida student activists and survivors of the latest U.S. school massacre are not real students but professional ‘crisis actors’ “being used as political tools by the far left to further anti-Conservative rhetoric and an anti-gun agenda. …Behind the teenagers, working as the string-pullers, are the same people behind the Women’s March. They are vehemently anti-gun, anti-American, and anti-Trump” http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/02/behind-various-anti-gun-movements-popping-parkland/ Meanwhile “Florida House Declines Debate On Assault Rifles, Calls Porn A ‘Health Risk'” (NPR) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/21/587548408/florida-house-declines-debate-on-assault-rifles-calls-porn-a-health-risk
“Watch teens organize against guns in their native language: Snapchat” https://qz.com/1212741/parkland-shooting-watch-teens-organize-against-guns-in-their-native-language-snapchat/
Meanwhile: “Twitter purges accounts, and conservatives cry foul” https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/21/twitter-purges-accounts-conservatives-357028 and Tech’s biggest companies are spreading conspiracy theories. Again. http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/21/technology/facebook-youtube-parkland-conspiracy-theories/index.html “On Wednesday, YouTube and Facebook were each forced to issue yet another mea culpa for promoting conspiracy theories about David Hogg, a student who survived the mass shooting at a Florida high school last week.
…To use Silicon Valley’s preferred parlance, it’s now hard to escape the conclusion that the spreading of misinformation and hoaxes is a feature, not a bug, of social media platforms — and their business models.”
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” Mario Savio: University of California, Sproul Hall Steps, Berkeley California, December 2, 1964. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcx9BJRadfw
No wonder Wayne LaPierre is freaking out (Dana Milbank 2/23/18 at 1:28 PM) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-wonder-wayne-lapierre-is-on-edge/2018/02/23/3aedcab0-18af-11e8-b681-2d4d462a1921_story.html?utm_term=.a14afd1b1ee6
Meanwhile Insurance company Chubb said Friday it will stop underwriting NRA insurance for gun owners. Likewise Symantec’s LifeLock, an identity-theft prevention service, and Norton, which offers computer security software, have also stopped providing discounts to NRA members. They were quickly joined by home security system provider SimpliSafe. MetLife, which provided NRA members with home and auto insurance, decided to nix its partnership, too.
PayPal, Square and Apple Pay all forbid the sale of firearms through their respective platforms years ago, according to The New York Times. However Amazon, Apple and AT&T continue to enable NRA TV.
Two gun safety groups want Apple, Amazon, Google and Roku to remove the NRA’s online video channel from their streaming platforms. http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/23/media/nra-tv-apple-tv-amazon-fire-roku-chromecast/index.html In letters on Friday, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense and Everytown for Gun Safety called on the companies to cut ties with NRATV because it “promotes dangerous conspiracy theories, racially charged rhetoric, and violent demonization of the NRA’s political opponents.” They also called on DirecTV to remove an NRA-produced show from its platforms. “American businesses have the responsibility to make ethical decisions about the content they will provide on their platforms,” Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts wrote. The groups launched an online petition with the hashtag #DumpNRATV. On Thursday, #StopNRAmazon began trending on Twitter as customers threatened to stop buying products or cancel their Prime memberships if Amazon doesn’t pull NRATV.
#StopNRAmazon Trends on Twitter After Celebrities Ask Amazon to Drop NRA TV https://gizmodo.com/stopnramazon-trends-on-twitter-after-celebrities-ask-a-1823244315
David Hogg, the 17 year old Florida school shooting survivor-turned-activist who has recently been the target of vicious smear campaigns on social media, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” today and called out National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch about her true loyalties. http://www.businessinsider.com/david-hogg-calls-out-dana-loesch-nra-florida-shooting-reaction-2018-2 ” “Look at Dana. Look at what she saying. Is she actually saying anything, or is that just a tone to distract the American public and distract her NRA members from the fact that she’s not serving them? She is serving the gun manufacturers,” Hogg said. “She’s not serving the people of the NRA, because the people that are joining the NRA, 99.9% of them are amazing people that just want to be safe, responsible gun owners. And I fully can support that.” Loesch had appeared on “This Week” right before him {see link} and also at CNN’s town hall last week.”
ABC News: ‘This Week’ transcript 2-25-18: NRA National Spokesperson Dana Loesch and Florida school shooting survivors http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-25-18-nra-national-spokesperson-dana/story?id=53331204
Emma González, a student at the helm of a burgeoning pro-gun control youth movement that erupted after a shooter killed 17 of her classmates and others in Parkland, Florida, now has more Twitter followers than the National Rifle Association. https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/us/gonzalez-nra-twitter/index.html González isn’t the only Stoneman Douglas survivor to build strong Twitter bases following the attack. Classmate David Hogg now has 352,000 followers and Cameron Kasky has 240,000. All are advocating for tougher gun laws and other measures to increase school safety and are promoting March For Our Lives student rallies on March 24.
“Big and Small, N.R.A. Boycott Efforts Come Together in Gun Debate” (NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/business/nra-boycotts.html
President Trump on Wednesday repeatedly embraced a series of gun control measures, telling a group of lawmakers at the White House to pursue bills that have been opposed for years by the vast majority of the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association.
In a remarkable televised meeting in the Cabinet Room, the president appeared to stun giddy Democrats and stone-faced Republicans by calling for comprehensive gun control that would expand background checks, keep guns from the mentally ill, secure schools and restrict gun sales from some young adults. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/us/politics/trump-gun-control.html
“Donald Trump Caves on Gun Reform, Will Appoint the Kind of Study Panel He Denounced Saturday” http://www.newsweek.com/trump-caves-gun-reform-plans-appoint-kind-study-panel-he-denounced-saturday-840109
Also: “In the midst of a PR crisis, the National Rifle Association released a new promotional video in which prominent spokeswoman Dana Loesch goes on the defensive against “Hollywood phonies,” athletes who sit during the national anthem, journalists and almost everyone who has become critical of the massive gun lobbying group following the Parkland, Florida, school shooting.” http://www.newsweek.com/nra-dana-loesch-recruitment-ad-athletes-hollywood-journalists-830546
White House insists Trump has not ‘chickened out’ on NRA http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/377987-white-house-insists-trump-not-backing-down-from-nra
“Fox & Friends whines students were picking on the NRA during their ‘political’ walkout” https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/fox-friends-whines-students-picking-nra-political-walkout/
“Marco Rubio: Parkland survivors ‘have done more in five weeks than has been done in 15 years’. Florida senator praises students for forcing action on Capitol Hill without politicizing America’s gun control debate beyond repair” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/23/marco-rubio-parkland-survivors-action-guns-washington “Rubio was interviewed as part of the guest-editing of the Guardian US site by student journalists from the Eagle Eye, the newspaper of Stoneman Douglas. The students requested the interview with the Florida senator because they particularly wanted to put questions directly to lawmakers from both parties as part of the collaboration. Rubio sat down with the Guardian on Capitol Hill on Thursday, shortly after unveiling a so-called “red flag” bill, which would encourage states to adopt policies allowing law enforcement officials or family members to file gun restraining orders to remove firearms from potentially violent individuals.”