BILL ALLEN
Guest Writer
allen@lbknews.com
Just as I was starting to write this column, I heard about the Uvalde, Texas school shooting which killed 19 little children and two adults.
This left me angry and my anger is directed more towards the politicians and other enablers than it is towards the shooter.
This issue, just like everything these days, will be politicized with each party blaming the other which is their substitute for doing something to fix the problem.
I am familiar with assault weapons as a result of my wartime service but there is absolutely no valid reason why such weapons are permitted in our civilian society.
It is a fact that such weapons were outlawed at one time but the prohibition expired during the GW Bush administration and when in control neither political party has acted on renewing it.
It is disgusting that these politicians take contributions from the National Rifle Association and then perpetuate the wishes of the NRA.
The Supreme Court did not help when they issued a decision on a case called Heller v Washington, DC in which they interpreted the second amendment to mean other than what it literally states which is that the right to keep and bear arms should be permitted to “ a well regulated militia.”
A militia is an organization like the National Guard but the court interpreted it to be any person. And, of course the States have laws, which are supposedly within the federal law but are, in fact, less regulatory.
Our useless politicians have not only done nothing about assault weapons but are not even able to legislate tough background checks.
Interestingly, I had planned to write about the Parkland, Florida School shooting so I will still go ahead with that since it further highlights incompetence at both Federal and local levels.
The year was 2018, the date was February 14 and the place was Marjorie
Stoneham High School in Parkland, Broward County, Florida.
On that day, Nicholas Cruz ,age 18, used his assault weapon to kill 17 people and wound 17 others.
Broward County had hired a new Superintendent of Schools whose name was Robert Runcie. He was African American and came from the Chicago School System, which was one of the worst in America.
Nicholas Cruz was the perfect example of a ticking time bomb whose “red flag” behavior said loud and clear that he was a sure bet to initiate some sort of horrible, violent event.
Prior to the arrival of Runcie, a person like Cruz when at the point of no return would have been turned over to the police and probably end up in jail.
But Runcie was not happy with the fact that the number of disciplinary cases among minorities were far in excess of their numbers in the population so he instituted a new policy called “the Promise Program”
Under the new program the unruly students would remain in the school system and not be referred to police.
So Cruz remained in the school system while his behavior became more and more dangerous.
On Jan. 5, 2018 a woman contacted an FBI “tip line” about Cruz which, included specific information about his plan “ to shoot up a school”
The FBI completely ignored the tip, which, if acted upon, would have prevented the shooting. They later paid 127 million dollars to a group of survivors who had filed a lawsuit against them.
On the day of the shooting the Broward County Sheriff’s office failed to respond properly and a school resource officer who was armed hid while Cruz killed 17 people.
In October 2021 Cruz pleaded guilty but then had to go on trial for the “penalty” determination, which would be execution or life without parole.
Believe it or not but this trial is scheduled to take four months and is overseen by a Judge who has been called “incompetent”
As of now, it has been four years and three months since this tragedy and still not over.
On another subject I am asking the same question as I believe is being asked by President Biden’s staff members and that is “ How do we get Joe Biden to keep his mouth shut at times when he is unscripted and without his teleprompter?”
On three occasions in the last eight months Biden has been asked publicly about our position on defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion by China.
I believe that they keep asking since they cannot believe his reply, which in each case has been that we have a commitment to defend Taiwan militarily, which is not true.
Here we have the President of the United States speaking in public to the whole world and making a statement on a critical matter that is completely incorrect.
In each case his staff members have had to correct him by pointing out that we do not have a commitment that he says we have.
In an interview with George Stepanopoulos, Biden said that our commitment to defend Taiwan is the same as that which we have with NATO, which is completely false.
That gets me to thinking about the next hairbrained idea of our President and that is his approval of a “Disinformation Governance Board” which would be part of the Department of Homeland Security and reminds many logical thinking people of the George Orwell classic “1984.”
So we have 17 Intelligence Agencies and a National Security Agency and now we need another similar Agency which would be headed by a woman who Politico said “had a record” which was completely unbalanced politically.
And by the way — one last comment on Taiwan which is that no prior President has stated that we have a commitment to do what Biden says we have and they have completely avoided even suggesting what he says loud and clear but false.
Maybe he needs his private disinformation department.
