It was approximately 15 years ago that I announced my absurd campaign slogan to run for president in 2020…”Kids are gonna die, let ‘em.”
Two updates; I’m not running for president in 2020 for the same reason I said I wasn’t going to in 2005…I can’t afford the pay cut. I mean, seriously, who can live on an annual salary of only $400,000? Yeeeessshhhh.
Secondly, my slogan is more true, correct, and solid than ever before.
At the time that I formulated my slogan, we were, as a nation, screaming from the rooftops for two specific things to address a myopic number of child deaths in America. With that said, let me be perfectly clear that any dead child is a tragedy, but it happens, as tragedies do. No one deserved 9/11, no woman deserves to be beaten to death by her husband, and no man should be enslaved into a Middle Eastern army at the age of 8 and raped in the process, yet these things happen. I am not now, nor was I then, suggesting that we shouldn’t try to mitigate such things, but can we please, for the love of God, enact policies that will actually solve something? And, can we also, again, please for the love of God, acknowledge that, in the end, kids are still gonna die? That’s what we call…wait for it…life.
In 2005 we were arguing for two asinine things; backup cameras in cars and mandatory helmet laws for children when riding bikes. On the former, I argued that children being run over by their family members wasn’t a “camera” problem, it was a family values issues. Watch your god-damn kids. On the latter, I spoke from personal experience, knowing that doing dumb stuff on my bike as a child taught me lessons about risk and reward and stupidity.
Guess what? In 2005, an average of 100 kids were killed by idiots backing over them and an average of 100 kids were killed while riding bikes (usually from neck injuries which, of course, helmets won’t help). In 2017 (the last year we have stats for) now that we’ve implemented back up cameras in all new cars and mandated across the nation, by law, that all kids wear helmets while riding their bikes, we have an average of 100 kids backed over by their family and an average of 100 kids killed while riding their bikes. Great work, America…results, apparently, don’t matter.
And so, here we are…we’re going to make it illegal for a person who can join our armed forces and carry and use long guns in the name of our nation to buy a similar gun for 3 years. We’re going to arm teachers…you know…the same teachers that are sexually molesting their students at an epidemic level in modern day America. The same teachers who are physically assaulting their students and/or locking them out of safe havens during the Valentine’s Day Massacre in Florida. Cool. Give them guns, that should solve everything.
You are aware, correct, that 5 armed, trained police officers were on scene during the Parkland shooting and did nothing? Hello? Is this thing on? Arming people and training people doesn’t make them courageous, even if they’re cops. Grow the hell up.
Don’t get me wrong…I’m an “all of the above,” person. Arm teachers, install metal detectors in every school, find a way to have dozens of armed cops at every school, make universal background checks the law of the land, ban so called “assault weapons,” and every other stupid idea all of you have…and then, recognize that kids are gonna die and we need to let ‘em. It’s harsh to hear, I get it…it’s also true. Kids are gonna do stupid stuff and they’re going to be targeted by psychos as well. In other words, they’re gonna die. There is no way to stop the tragic reality of life and be, in our case, a pretend-free-nation. It’s ironic that adults are the ones who need to grow up, isn’t it?
