Parkland Shooting: Vigilance Will, Hysteria Won't Do.

A couple of days before the Parkland shooting, 18 Nigerian students on excursion from the northern state of Bauchi died in a horrible road carnage in a neighboring state. The bus in which they were traveling, while trying to negotiate a bad stretch on the road, had a head on collision with an articulated vehicle that was trying to do the same maneuvers. A couple of dollars spent on road repairs could have saved the lives of these kids and three members of staff. In the same way a little attention on the part of the FBI and the police could have gone a long way in saving the lives of the Parkland kids. A nation can afford to toy with so many things, especially great and rich nations like the US, can even afford to toy with its future(there are almost limitless resources for resurgence) but it cannot afford to toy with the future of its young ones.
So Washington is the right place to march on now, Trump is the obvious person to blame and the National Rifle Association is the right body to take the hit. It is all part of the exigencies of the moment but the hysteria will die down, it would not be the first time, the huge puff of public outrage will expend itself very quickly, like all flashes, and the acrimonious debates about guns will go on forever. We pray and hope such a carnage will never repeat itself. We could all lend our hopes and prayers a helping hand.
Not by railing incessantly at the FBI. The way the organization is set up, it will not stop expending too much time and energy and resources on headline quests that end exactly nowhere: like investigations into Russian meddling in US polls, like inquiries into the Clinton e-mails or even the assassination of President Kennedy. It won't escape attention lapses altogether but despite the hot flak it is currently receiving, nobody is seriously suggesting putting it up for sale. The good it does far outweighs its failings
Not by marching to Washington, Seriously. It is nice calling Trump names but even if he has a change of heart and turns on his erstwhile allies in the NRA and wins ten terms, stopping the likes of Mr Cruz will not happen from the White House. Tougher legislation on federal checks will have an initial surge but eventually will not be enough. The Congress and Senate are peopled by lawmakers most of whom came from varied constituencies far removed from Florida. It is a national tragedy, sure, but selling anti-gun legislation to US voters is often a hard sell. The Democrats may be riding with the tide now but few have listened to President Trump query why anti-gun bills gained little traction while the Dems controlled both legislative houses. The FBI, Trump and both houses and the most stringent of all laws, if they manage to pass them, won't ever get guns off the streets. The gun culture is too entrenched. Besides America is vast. In population, in land mass and in the sheer number of possibilities available to folks: money and like resources, friends and relatives, cyberspace, rivers and forests and so on. Someone who is going to get a gun is always going to get a gun, even if all the guns in the US are confiscated.
So the right place to march to is our homes, our households. Our bedrooms and cyberspaces such as computers and mobile phones. We are a bit emboldened to make this suggestion because we have it on good authority that hundreds of mass-shooting plots are aborted in the US every year by acquaintances, grandmothers, grandfathers, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, girlfriends and so on, even neighbors. Folks who take a healthy interest in what those close to them are thinking or doing. The relationship involved in the discoveries is what often prevents the public from hearing about them. Like terrorists, would-be mass murderers are not vipers that stay still for long periods and then rise and strike all of a sudden; they are more or less rattlesnakes rattling warnings and signs the size and brightness of comets streaming across heavens. It was what could have saved the Parkland kids, with a little more attention from the FBI, a remiss that isn't likely to repeat itself.
So to our bedrooms we must march. Vigilance. Bedrooms and You Tube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, all forms of cyberspace. Let's take a healthy interest in what others, especially our kids and those close to us, are doing. It isn't snooping or snitching. It is keeping our schools and streets safe. Privacy is great but in times of tragedy like this, few, very few remember privacy