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Conservatives To Elementary School Kids: Throw Yourselves At The Next Gunman

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Conservatives — two, at least, notable writers — in wildly flawed and frightening attempts to find ways to avoid gun control, are now suggesting, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, that a classroom-full of, say, six-year olds, should throw themselves at the next gunman armed with a Bushmaster rifle, and that “some of the huskier 12-year-old boys” should have thrown themselves at Adam Lanza.

Yes they are.

Take, for example, libertarian writer Megan McArdle, a special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

In, “There’s Little We Can Do to Prevent Another Massacre,” McArdle takes the typically right-wing position: change is bad, and thus, there’s little we can do to prevent another massacre. McArdle laments the possibility of gun control laws, or any new law restricting (nefariously-called) “gun rights”:

My guess is that we’re going to get a law anyway, and my hope is that it will consist of small measures that might have some tiny actual effect, like restrictions on magazine capacity.  I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.  Would it work?  Would people do it?  I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.

[Bolding ours]

Alrighty then.

You have to just love the idea of someone advocating group suicide — which is what gang-rushing shooters effectively is — then proclaiming she has no idea if it would work.

Instead of “duck and cover,” let’s teach “leap and smother.”

Right.

If that’s not disgusting enough for you, take the National Review’s Charlotte Allen. But first, a reminder about the National Review.

The National Review used to be a bastion of respected conservative intellectualism. Founded by the revered (and, yes, reviled) William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955, the magazine wasn’t a home to conservative writers, it actually defined what conservatism should be — and what it should not be.

The “not” included Ayn Rand, the John Birch Society, George Wallace, and ultimately, Pat Buchanan. (Clearly, they lost much of that battle.)

Now, the National Review Online is home to racism, homophobia, bigotry, Maggie Gallagher, and Charlotte Allen.

“Like most people, I’ve been thinking and thinking about the Sandy Hook massacre. I’ve even pored over a map of the school and its killing sites — and studied a timeline of the incident, which appears to have unfolded over about 20 minutes,” writes uber-conservative Charlotte Allen:

I have three observations:

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

Remember, this is a conservative.

The main point of Allen’s ignorant idiocy, as Zack Beauchamp at Think Progress writes, is the Sandy Hook “Shooting Occurred Because Women Ran The School.”

There’s more disgustingness in Allen’s editorial, but I cannot even begin to address it without wanting to hit my head against the wall.

So, first of all, every man, woman, and child in America who isn’t Charlotte Allen but who does listen to the news knows that the school was kindergarten through fourth grade, Not, “it was a K–6 school.” That’s just stupid at this point, and anyone who been paying the least bit of attention knows this. And Charlotte Allen is paid to know this, or to find out, so, fail.

Second, there was a “male janitor” in the school, and a male fourth grade teacher, so everything she wrote there is pure malarkey.

“Kevin Anzellotti, the head custodian at Sandy Hook, is a man,” Dave Weigel, in, “The Stupidest Thing Anyone Has Written About Sandy Hook,” at Slate reminds us. “Theodore Varga, a fourth grade teacher, also possesses XY chromosomes. I just did the research Allen didn’t do, and it took all of fourteen seconds. Beyond that, though — why does no one who writes this way look into the circumstances of other massacres?”

Weigel then, again, reminds us of the men who were heroes who tried to save others at the tragic Gabby Giffords shooting. They died.

“Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza,” Charlotte Allen writes.

Yes, let’s stop and think about what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

First, there were no 12-year old boys, because 12-year old boys are in sixth grade. And there was no sixth grade.

Second, let’s pretend her statement isn’t pure garbage and vile and offensive and play along.

Adam Lanza had a Bushmaster AR-15 and two handguns and more than enough bullets for every one of the 450-600 students in Sandy Hook Elementary.

What that would have looked like is a lot of 12-year old boys and male teachers lying on the floor, dead.

Lanza put up to eleven bullets in some of the six and seven year old children.

And when, pray tell, does having a penis outweigh having a gun?

Charlotte Allen and Megan McArdle deserve to go down in history as two of the most fatuous, self-ndulgent, and just plain ignorant writers in America.

 

Image: “Memorials abound in Newtown….this one on road into Sandy Hook,” by Al Jones, via Twitter

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News

‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

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March 27, 2023

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First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, speaking Monday afternoon at a National League of Cities conference, told attendees, “Our children deserve better,” as she broke the news of the Nashville school mass shooting at Covenant Presbyterian School where three children and three adults were shot dead.

“You know,” Dr. Biden, herself an educator and clearly pained by the news, began her remarks by saying, “I hate to say what I’m gonna say next because you know you’re so enthusiastic and with so much energy and hope and I feel it.”

“But while you’ve been in this room, I don’t know whether you’ve been on your phones but we just learned about another shooting in Tennessee, a school shooting and I am truly without words and our children deserve better, and we stand – all of us – we stand with Nashville in prayer.”

READ MORE: New WSJ Poll Is Devastating for DeSantis and His ‘Anti-Woke’ Policies

The First Lady, a former public high school English teacher and currently a professor of English at a community college, was speaking at the organization’s Congressional City Conference.

Watch Dr. Biden below or at this link.

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BREAKING NEWS

Death Toll Rises to Six as Three Children and Three Adults Declared Dead In Covenant School Mass Shooting (Streaming Video)

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March 27, 2023

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Six people have now died after a shooter shot and killed three young children and three adults at The Covenant Presbyterian School, a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. Police say the shooter was a 28-year old woman who had two assault rifles and a handgun.

WSMV announced the rise in deaths on-air, noting that the shooter is also dead. A police spokesperson later increased the announced death toll from five to six. Including the shooter the death toll is seven.

Live streaming video via CBS News below.

This article has been updated with additional video.

1:56 PM ET: Updated to change age of shooter based on new reporting from WSMV.

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ANALYSIS

New WSJ Poll Is Devastating for DeSantis and His ‘Anti-Woke’ Policies

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March 27, 2023

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“Florida is where woke goes to die,” according to the Sunshine State’s governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, who has based much of his expected 2024 presidential campaign on being “anti-woke.”

But a new poll from Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is devastating to many of the policies being promoted and enacted by Governor DeSantis in his “free state of Florida,” calling into question how he and other Republicans who embrace his ideas will fare on the national stage.

“Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans,” warns the WSJ, with some on social media pointing to a graphic that purports to capture how much America has changed in the past 25 years.

READ MORE: Trump Team’s Efforts to Rein Him ‘Wilted’ in Waco as He Invoked ‘Retribution and Violence’: Report

The importance of issues of patriotism, religion, having children, and community involvement have dropped dramatically across America. The one that has increased? Money.

One Democratic strategist calls it “eye-popping.”

Money is also the only issue on which Democrats and Republicans both agree.

But the real siren for Republicans comes in answers to so-called “culture war” questions.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans, expectedly, is huge, but DeSantis – should he launch a presidential run – will confront conservative and independent voters (not to mention, of course, Democrats) who aren’t as keen on, say, banning books, as he might like.

Asked, “Which of these concerns you more about schools today?,” a whopping 61% chose “some schools may ban books and censor topics that are educationally important.” Just 36% opted for “some schools may teach books and topics that some students or their parents feel are inappropriate or offensive.”

And more than half the country (56%) say they have some or a great deal of confidence in public schools. Just one-third (33%) said very little or none.

READ MORE: ‘Pits Parents Against Parents’: House Republicans Pass Anti-LGBTQ Florida-Style K-12 ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights’

DeSantis’ attempts to radically reshape the concept of public education in Florida made another dramatic move last week, when the Republican-majority legislature passed a bill the expands the school voucher program to every student. It could decimate enrollment in public schools, which would also reduce the amount of federal funding public schools in the Sunshine State get. Expected to cost billions, it could also lead to expansions of private and faith-based schools.

Monday morning, surrounded by school children, DeSantis signed it into law.

And yet nationally, according to the WSJ poll, a plurality of Americans oppose school vouchers.

“Do you favor, oppose, or neither favor nor oppose states giving parents tax-funded vouchers they can use to help pay for tuition for their children to attend private or religious schools of their choice instead of public schools?”

37% oppose the vouchers.
34% support them.

Democratic strategist and former Hillary Clinton campaign national spokesperson Josh Schwerin lists a “few findings from the new WSJ poll that should scare Republicans relying on ‘woke’ attacks”: “1) Tolerance is as important as money 2) Book banning is far worse than offensive content 3) Majorities think society has been about right or not gone far enough on range of DEI issues.”

For those who look at Trump rallies, watch right-wing news, or listen to GOP politicians or influencers, the idea that another “red wave” is coming next year may seem real, but even the right-wing Wall Street Journal found that a plurality of voters (44%) identify as Democrats – and just 38% identify as Republicans. 18% call themselves independents without leaning one way or another.

Nearly half the country (47%) identifies as moderate.

One issue from the poll DeSantis and the GOP do seem to have support on is diminishing the rights of transgender Americans, who are under attack every day.

Despite increased anti-trans hate crimes, despite the 430 anti-LGBTQ bills filed this year alone (according to the ACLU,) a plurality of Americans (43%) say society has “gone too far” in accepting transgender people. Just one-third say society hasn’t gone far enough.

But on other issues of equality, as Schwerin mentioned, nearly half the country (48%) say society has not gone far enough in promoting equality between men and women. And pluralities also say society has not gone far enough in accepting people who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual (37%), and businesses taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity (39%).

There’s another statistic that also flies directly in the face of DeSantis and his “where woke goes to die” motto.

Two-thirds of the country say society has either not gone far enough has been “about right” on “Schools and universities taking steps to promote racial and ethnic diversity.”

Just three in ten Americans (30%) say society has gone too far.

See the video and graphics above or at this link.

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