Riley: Don't attack students waging war against guns

I don’t know Janine Kateff.

But I don’t have to to know the chairwoman of the 14th District Republican Committee to know that she is wrong to criticize students participating in a national walkout Wednesday to fight for improved school safety and changes in gun laws.

She apparently is bothered by protests against gun ownership, “a right set out in our Constitution,” a news release from her organization said.

The protest, she said, “is designed to restrict one of America’s basic freedoms.”

Uh, I guess Kateff skipped the First Amendment to fight for the Second, you know, that one about freedom of speech?

That students are speaking out to protect their own safety since Congress won’t is something to be applauded. But people owned by the NRA not only refuse to see it —they have devised two national strategies to combat it:

They are alleging that the students, who either lost friends or imagined that what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Valentine’s Day could happen at their school, are political pawns being used by their opposition. School shootings are not as bad as black-on-black crime in Chicago.

Here’s what I suggest: Write down the name of any politician or supporter of a politician who makes either claim. Make sure any person connected to either heinous claim does not ever get elected to anything again.

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No one’s being naive here. I can’t blame the GOP for looking for a strategy to protect one of its largest donors, the National Rifle Association. I can still remember that young Florida teen asking Sen. Marco Rubio during a town hall meeting whether he’d pledge to not take money from the NRA and Rubio not being able to say “No.” But bad NRA money also applies to any candidate — Democrat or Independent — taking money from the NRA.

And as for the two-pronged strategy that the GOP and the conservative movement have embraced to fight grieving and scared children or to distract from the gun debate, here is something to think about:

These students are becoming a force. They soon will be a voting force. Attacking them for speaking out is un-American. But more than that, the time and breath spent on attacking them could be used to help find a solution to the murders they’re trying to prevent.

And that other heinous claim, the latest one from the GOP playbook being passed out like NRA flyers, the one about black people killing each other in Chicago?

As I told host conservative WJR-AM (760) radio host Frank Beckman and say again now: There are numerous conversations to be had about violence in this country, including one involving school shootings, and another involving black-on-black crime. How do the GOP and conservatives figure one Trumps the other? When America demands change in gun laws to stop massacres, the response can't be, "Well, black people are shooting each other, too!"



Really?

How will stopping black-on-black crime in Chicago stop mass school shootings, which are committed mostly by troubled white males, nationwide?

And do any gun-obsessed GOP members really think that we believe they care about black people being killed in Chicago, something that wasn't even a thing, not even on their radar, until another kid shot up a school?

(The answer is no.)

So rather than attack children who are hurting and who are afraid, why don’t we focus on taking concrete action, something America incredibly hasn’t done since the murder of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012?

To be fair, Kateff, who was formerly a principal in the Willow Run and Rochester school districts, has her reasons for criticizing the school protests. She cares about children.

She just doesn't believe the protests should take place during the school day, and she believes that allowing a majority of students to protest gun laws ostracizes students who believe the Second Amendment should allow for all people to have all guns. She believes schools should be a politics-free zone unless all sides of an issue are presented fairly.

"When you bring this emotional topic to the schools, something that is driven by women, not students, you're naturally going to get the emotions from kids," she said. "My position is ... why not give them both sides of the story? Let them have an all-school assembly, bring in two different speakers.That's fair. There is no question that this is a protest with the hopes of bringing more gun control. Let them hear the other side of the story, have a Second Amendment speaker talking about why that would not be a good thing."

Kateff said if the students remain unconvinced, they should march — just not during school hours, which affects students who don't agree with them. She also said that she hoped there would be as big an outcry for improved mental health care across the country.

"Let's take a look at the kids doing these shootings. The average kid doing this is the kid who's the loner, who's got very few friends and maybe they're bullied," she said. They almost are, in 90% of the shootings so far, white.

She also suggested a walk-up rather than a walkout, with students and teachers approaching kids who are loners or withdrawn or who look different and make them feel valued.

That is an excellent idea that has nothing to do with stopping school shootings. And the argument shouldn't be improving mental health and the lives of troubled kids or improving gun laws. America needs both.

Kateff also said that all doors at schools should be locked except one, and any unlocked door should have a guard and the main entrances should have metal detectors. Nearly every high school in most urban districts operate that way now. And there have been no school massacres at urban or predominantly black schools.

Kateff said if America did ban the AR15 rifle, the gun used in many school massacres, that wouldn't stop somebody from coming in with a machete, a knife, an explosive — and, she said, "Where would it end?"

And that's where Kateff ran off the rails. No trucks or machetes or explosives have been used in mass school shootings — and I hope these kinds of responses don't give anyone ideas.

But doing nothing is not an option. And there lies the problem. Gun advocates and the NRA would rather do nothing than risk too much being done, even to save children's lives.

But these high school students right here? Today, they are showing what they can do. They are voters or soon-to-be voters. So now, maybe we'll see which adults care, which representatives in Congress care, which ones will listen to them and act rather than:

Allege they are being coerced into action, or Pretend to care about other shooting victims to distract from the national scourge of school shootings, or Want them to sit down and shut up.

And my advice to the young warriors whose #NeverAgain movement is taking off: Take names. See who isn't listening to you. The next elections everywhere are coming up.

Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley. For a list of Rochelle's upcoming appearances for her book "The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery," visit www.rochelleriley.com.