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At the last 2016 city council debate held at the Arab-American Community Center on Beach Boulevard, among the public there was a good number of young people, which was a refreshing and encouraging scene. Many of them were members of the Anaheim High School organizations called BROS and CROWN (Civically Raising Opportunities for Women).
Months later I saw some pictures of these groups doing community work, cleaning up a park. I believe it was done as a civic response to the negative image presented by some media of the students involved in the Palais Street neighborhood incident, in which an off duty LA police officer confronted a student stepping into his lawn with a gun.
In this blog we have had long discussions on this issue of gun safety (see here).We can add to the counter-arguments for restricting the use of the AR-15 that nuclear arms are much more lethal, and that we are not doing much nowadays to destroy them. Also some people buying these of type of machine-gun weapons do it not for the purpose of attacking innocent victims like school- children, but in the event the social order breaks down, the “survivalist” crowd.
Whether these more modern type of arguments plus the constitutional right to bear arms impede a logical revision of this issue, we need to move on to avoid more massacres due to these machine-guns type of arms being used.The Parkland students in the video make a strong argument to urgently and seriously address gun safety. I hope students across this land, including Anaheim, join them.
These kids are awesome! I hope the bros do follow the lead of the kids in Florida. Im impressed by the kids who are going to be civically engaged right out the gate from high school and vote for the first time when they turn 18! I would love to see all kids stand up to the NRA in this manner.
I heard that the BROS are doing amazing things.
Regarding the Florida students, at the funeral of Alex Schachter who was killed in the shooting, this poem which he had written a couple of weeks ago was read :
“Life is like a rollercoaster. It has some ups and downs. Sometimes you can take it slow or very fast. It may be hard to breathe at times, but you have to push yourself and keep going.
Your bar is your safety. It’s like your family and friends. You hold on tight and you don’t let go. But sometimes you might throw your hands up, because your friends and family will always be with you. Just like that bar keeping you safe at all times.
It may be too much for you at times – the twists, the turns, the upside downs. But you get back up. You keep chugging along. Eventually it comes to a stop. You won’t know when or how. But you will know that it will be time to get off and start anew. Life is like a rollercoaster.”
A couple more excellent relevant videos:
and
A follow up to the Rubio video:
” Eventually, Rubio responded that he would support laws raising the minimum age for buying a rifle and banning bump stocks, and said that he was open to discussing limiting large-capacity magazines. He also expressed support for so-called gun-violence restraining orders, a measure popular among gun-control advocates. In the politics of guns, it was a remarkable shift of position—but only if he actually follows through on those commitments.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cnns-town-hall-on-guns-and-the-unmaking-of-marco-rubio