Emma González, who you’ll remember from the “we call BS” speech, has a piece in Harper’s Bazaar. It is really good:
Teachers do not need to be armed with guns to protect their classes, they need to be armed with a solid education in order to teach their classes. That’s the only thing that needs to be in their job description. People say metal detectors would help. Tell that to the kids who already have metal detectors at school and are still victims of gun violence. If you want to help arm the schools, arm them with school supplies, books, therapists, things they actually need and can make use of.
Read the whole thing, especially for the Lemony Snicket reference.
Brachiator
Words of wisdom.
ruemara
They’re far too sensible for goddamned stupid adults. Pretty much every adult in my life failed me. This entire thing where folks are looking at teens and declaring the next generation will save us from our fucking idiot spineless short attention span society – is reinvigorating the disgust, anger and rejection I felt towards adults by 9.
Sorry, if there are any adults in the room. I’m sure you’re wonderful.
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
And then John was a Zombie.
Old School
From the column:
>Still, if I’m able to communicate one thing to adults it would be this: it should not be easier to obtain a driver’s license than it is to purchase a gun, and military grade weapons should not be accessible in civilian settings.
It’s unfortunate that the one thing she wants to communicate is presumably the opposite of what she wants. The rest of the column is good though.
LAO
As the days pass, my respect and admiration for these kids just keeps growing.
But her emails!!!
@Old School:
You’re going to have to clarify what you think is wrong with this quote.
TenguPhule
Sweet Dreams, folks.
Mandalay
@Old School:
WTF???
trollhattan
@ruemara:
A. Guilty and 2. I occasionally have my up days, per my teenager.
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Yeah, I followed along just fine, thanks.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
OT, but this happened in downtown Louisville today. This deer is an Olympic class swimmer and diver which got INCREDIBLY lucky in making this leap, as normally, there would have been nothing but pavement about 20 feet lower at the spot it landed.
I’m guessing it got driven out of some grassy parks toward the heart of the city by all the flooding – this was two blocks east of my office.
frosty fred
@Mandalay: Pretty sure she meant to say it should not be easier to purchase a gun than to obtain a driver’s license.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara:
Well, some of us are good people.
Belafon
@ruemara:
Us adults have failed too many. I fear that too many are going to sit back and hope they’ll fix it. Our job has to be to give them the ability to fix their future, and support them where we can.
Matt McIrvin
@But her emails!!!: She got “obtain a driver’s license” and “purchase a gun” reversed in one clause. Just a rhetorical slip that’s easy enough to read through–I didn’t even notice it at first.
rikyrah
she also called out the NRA for their CRICKETS when ‘a good guy with a legal gun’ was killed – Philando Castile.
She called them out – ‘ they said nothing because he was Black. ‘
These kids have NFTG
Mnemosyne
@Old School:
D’oh! Copyeditor would have caught that, but newspapers and magazines have decided that spellcheck is good enough.
grandpa john
@Brachiator: More intelligent thoughts and words heard from one teenager than from any NRA/ or Republican owned by the highest bidder,amoral ,unethical piece of shit upto and including our liar in chief
bemused
Emma and the other teens like her are exactly what this country needs. They cut through all the political crap with intelligent arguments and reasoning. They show up the craven legislators, NRA, etc as the grifting sellouts they are. They are poised and focused on national tv and don’t allow the “adults” to derail their message.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: not a huge deal, since it will only matter to people who the essay would never convince.
Old School
@But her emails!!!: It should be easier to obtain a drivers license than to purchase a gun.
jeffreyw
@Major Major Major Major:
There are good people on both sides of the 30 year mark.
Major Major Major Major
@jeffreyw: are we seriously saying 30 is the cutoff for adulthood?
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
It’s even braver to speak out this way knowing how the right-wing flying monkeys mobilize to destroy anyone who opposes them. I can only imagine the online harassment she must be dealing with already.
And given how they were able to brainwash and radicalize a guy into shooting at a fucking pizza restaurant, I can’t help but worry for her, David Hogg and the other students. The NRA and its horde are awful enough when they’re commanding things, let alone when they’re actually feeling pressure for once.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Of course, but I’m one of those people with a copyeditor brain that glitches when I see stuff like that.
As I said, I blame the magazine’s website for not properly copyediting the essay, not the writer. That’s exactly the kind of mistake that tends to be invisible to the writer until someone else points it out.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
Trump says how he’s totally going to be tough and beat someone up, sits on his ass and eats a Big Mac, episode 400.
trollhattan
@Old School:
And, because we daily see how presumably trained, licensed and insured drivers actually drive, it should be a hellofa lot harder to obtain a gun and having a gun should come with similar relicensing, retesting and insurance requirements. Triply so for anybody with a public carry permit.
scav
How’s this for a contrast (not to imply that the UK isn’t wrestling with its own craziness): Most UK parents back air pollution exclusion zones around schools
Here, we seem to be on the fast-track in downright favor of lead-posioning our children in multiple ways.
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
And its all fun and games until he picks up a phone and tells the general on the scene to “do what needs to be done” so that he gets action and avoids responsibility for ordering it by blaming it on the general.
Also, having to rely on North Korea’s restraint when confronted by provocation is not good for long term planning.
Radiumgirl
@Old School: Good catch. I didn’t get your point at first — but in context I think it’s obvious what she is intending to say.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
Forget it. He’s not going to do it. Ever. He’s a giant fucking coward. He’s the biggest coward ever, more chickenshit than joke cowardly bully characters. We have been through this a hundred times already, and he has shown us who he is. He doesn’t have the guts to take action. And North Korea and the rest of the world have figured that out.
Rob
Thanks for linking to that piece, foucault. I’m already emailing my friends the link to the story.
J R in WV
@Old School:
You can’t read – her statement that you quote, if IF you quoted her accurately, tells us she thinks it should be harder to buy weapons that to get a driver’s license, which is completely true and accurate. What do you imagine it says in plain English?
Read it again!
Are you having trouble parsing that “not” in the first phrase with the second not in the completely different phrase?
Read it again!
Doug R
Looks fixed to me.
jeffreyw
@Major Major Major Major:
You got a mouse in your pocket?
Mnemosyne
@Doug R:
Some editor probably had an Oh Shit! moment and jumped in to fix it.
It really is a very common mistake and one that’s usually invisible to the writer. This is why we need copyeditors, people!
Mnemosyne
@jeffreyw:
Kids these days prefer hedgehogs.
efgoldman
What a kid. What a writer.
First paragraph just reaches out and grabs you by the throat.
I hope I’m still around when she runs for congress or some office. I can’t vote for her, but I can send her lots of $$$
trnc
@Mnemosyne: They should have put an editor’s note at the bottom.
But her emails!!!
@Old School: Ah. Somehow I didn’t catch that while reading through it.
Mnemosyne
@trnc:
Meh. It’s a copyediting correction, not a substantive change, and it wasn’t up for very long. They didn’t change the writer’s intention, they just corrected a grammatical error.
VeniceRiley
Both of my favorite young ladies are named Gonzalez. Remember this young girl-now-a-woman? Hillary’s youngest delegate? She’s still at it. You may want to follow her on Twitter: twitter.com/rachelgonkcmo
Waynski
@Mnemosyne:
This. Plus, we all knew what she meant.
zhena gogolia
Excellent article.
maya
@TenguPhule:
Meh. This is only a DEFVERY 2 alert. I’ll start chugging the scotch when he gives NorKor & the rest of the world his DEFVERY4 alert. Kinda works opposite of DEFCON scale
MomSense
If you get the chance, look up the #whatif video that Jaclyn Corin made for #marchforourlives. Amazing.
Oh and those idiot Vanity Fair editors should take note that Emma Gonzalez is a badass who likes to crochet and do embroidery. Don’t mock the fiber community. We kick ass.
rikyrah
KAPOW
I’m genuinely exhausted of people saying teens shouldn’t be involved in politics because “we don’t know anything.”
The president was a former reality TV star who knew literally nothing about politics, yet you still voted for him.
— Emilia (@PoliticalEmilia) February 26, 2018
Jim Vandewalker
Advice to the NRA: Remember what Vizzini said: Never get involved in a land war in Asia and never go up against the theatre kids from a high school named after Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
MisterForkbeard
@rikyrah:
Fixed.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
As Kay keeps saying, young people realize that the Trumps got where they are because of nepotism, cronyism, and corruption, and they are PISSED.
PIGL
This young woman makes me ashamed of my misspent youth. I’ll never have the gumption to take her place, but I hope I would have the courage to follow her to the very gates of hell. Because we will take them down.
PIGL
@efgoldman: you say where and how much and I will match it (within reason). Let me know if you need my email.
Xenos
I find it amazing that the guns & ammo fetish community thought they could push back on the Parkland survivors by being mean to them on the internet.
Do they even know any 16 year-old people? Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight (unfortunate metaphor, I know).