Thoughts not Prayers From Parkland - I'm Tired of F&*King Waiting

In the movie “Good Will Hunting”, Matt Damon plays a Boston abused tough guy genius named “Will”, who is best friend’s with Ben Affleck’s Character named “Chuckie”.

One day, Will is talking to Chuckie on their construction job site about how they will grow old together, drink beers, and their kids will be friends, etc.

Chuckie wants none of that because he believes Will has so much potential to do greater things, and is given opportunities that he and his friends can only dream about.

He tells Will that the best part of his day is the 10 seconds when he walks up to his doorstep every morning to pick him up for work, and when no one is there he thinks Will has moved on and taken advantage of one of those opportunities. 

No goodbye’s, no nothing. Just an empty apartment.

Watch that scene here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gfipuaIA68

Then one day that finally happens.

Watch that scene here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49TeSoo4Sx8

I too have a best part of my day – that brief moment every morning when I don’t hear/read about a mass shooting.

In my last article, I had to rewrite it a few times to capture all of the shootings within the time that I wrote it.

I also said that by the time I wrote my next article, there will be more to replace them.

Sadly, that prediction turned out to be true, as we learned about the senseless shooting in Virginia Beach last month. 

I wrote that someone/somewhere would be next.

I’m sure someone from Virginia Beach dismissed my statement that “you could be next”, because they thought “it will happen somewhere else, not here”.

Yea, right.

That’s what we thought in Parkland too.

And there will be someone else to take your place thinking the same thing when it happens in your town/city/suburb.

I play the lottery every week with my friends. Each time I review the winning numbers, I consider myself unlucky.

However, on 2/14/18, I considered myself the luckiest man alive because my daughter was not harmed during the shooting.

And not a day goes by that I don’t think that a change in timing, class schedule, or other circumstances could have had a very different outcome.

The truth is the mass shooting epidemic is very challenging to solve. For instance, in the case of Virginia Beach, the shooter didn’t fit the typical profile or seem to have trouble with the law. He did not appear to have any mental health issues, nor did he give off any signs that he was unstable.

I support everyone’s right to own a gun. I appreciate that just about every gun owner that I know is responsible, and would never use it for ill-advised purposes. I know that owning a gun makes most people feel safer, and I too have felt safer in situations when I knew someone in my group was carrying - or when I am in a location that has an armed presence, where you wouldn’t normally think there would be (i.e., movie theater).

But I also support more sensible gun laws such as universal background checks. Domestic abusers, those shown to be violent, and individuals with mental health issues should not have access to guns.

Not sure why people need military style assault weapons either (cue several comments about how I don’t know anything about guns), but if you do, a more extensive background check should be completed to ensure that you are using it for sport or any other valid reason.

For those of you, like many of my friends, who choose to have a weapon at home for protection – none of these regulations will affect you except for possibly delaying the time frame in which you can purchase a gun. 

Now will these sensible gun laws prevent all mass shootings in the future?

No.

However, it will absolutely prevent some.

At least I think it will. 

And let’s just say I am completely wrong on this point. Let’s say that after all of the fighting and the self-promoting narratives, the millions of dollars spent on lobbying, that somehow there are more gun laws passed…..

And the mass shooting epidemic actually goes UP.

I would be the first one to support removing every additional gun law enacted – I would arm teachers, priests, rabbis, bank tellers, a student in each classroom, and whoever else you want to have guns with no background check, no age limit, in addition to arming current domestic violent criminals, and require no mental health evaluation.

BUT...

In exchange, if the plan of having limited regulation doesn’t work either and mass shootings also go up, then you need to agree to go back to the drawing board.

So now it’s 20 years later, hundreds if not thousands of people are dead, and we are absolutely nowhere.

The point is no solution – more sensible gun laws or less regulation and arming more people – will prevent every one.

I find it hard to believe that anyone would disagree with the statement that flying is safer after 9/11.

But there still have been criminal activities on planes, albeit less, likely due to additional regulations.

Everyone wants to be safer. Having more oversight should, in theory, make us more safe.

Even if processes and procedures fail (like the MSD shooting), there is nothing wrong with having multiple safety nets to prevent massacres.

Now I acknowledge that even if all of these laws as described above were in place, the Virginia Beach Shooting still would have happened.

Those on the extreme right (I am a Republican by the way) will argue that because it was a “gun free” zone, it prevented a “good guy with a gun” from stopping a “bad guy with a gun”.

Maybe that’s true.

However, I submit that rather than eliminating gun free zones that someone trained in the use of guns be appointed to protect that area.

But you have to have the right person/people.

As an example, if you have the BSO officer that we had in the MSD Shootings – you are as good as dead.

And while we are on that topic, I must address this because it has really been bothering me.

The Parkland BSO officer was arrested recently.

I support that arrest, but he won’t serve any jail time.

There are some, 99% (assumption) that live outside of our community, that “feel bad” or want to “forgive” him.

Someone actually posted that in one of the Parkland Groups that I subscribe to.

Now I very rarely respond to those types of posts, because mostly they are just written to incite people. 

They post articles, pictures, videos, or memes that aren’t fact checked, or justify behavior of things that fit within their narrative  - even though their candidate or political party did/said the exact same thing recently. 

I don’t usually take the bait.

My friends are often the authors of such said posts, so I wouldn’t want to harm our friendship with an assassin like non-verbal written attack.

For the people that I do not know, and seem to have endless amounts of time and energy to frequently engage random strangers in a “comment battle” that no one ever wins, I simply dismiss them as weak cowards who would never have the “balls” to say the same things in person to someone that they write. 

This one got to me though.

I used every ounce of strength in my body not to type out a comment that would have absolutely destroyed this person, crushed his ego, and sent him crying into a corner.

It was like when Bruce Banner tries not to become the HULK, only in written form.

However, something told me that he actually had good intentions, and just was a misguided social media user - which turned out to be the case.

Therefore, instead massacring his psyche, I responded in a very tactical, understanding way - and he ended up taking down his post. (I was not the only one who commented, so I am not suggesting that my comment was the one that made him take it down.)

I still 100% disagree with him.

And here is why.

I can absolutely understand someone freezing in that moment. 

Your average person.

That’s why not all of us are heroes like Coach Hixon, Coach Beigel, Coach Feis.

But this guy was a tenured trained deputy, and his only job was to protect the students and personnel at that school.

Even so, I can almost understand him freezing even though it’s his job.

Almost.

But here is my problem.

I have not heard once speck of remorse from him.

Not an “I’m sorry”.

Not a “Please forgive me”.

All I have heard have been comments that have been supplied to him by his lawyer to avoid any litigation.

If it was me and I froze in that moment, I would be begging for forgiveness from each of the families and the community, regardless of what my attorney told me. I would be on TV crying my eyes out. I would likely walk myself into the police station myself to be arrested. 

Not this guy.

He is now retired, and collecting his pension.

And that’s why he can’t be forgiven.

But as we argue on social media and Cable TV News stations about how more guns and less guns are the answer, the very people who are in decision making capacities still have not fully addressed the problem.

Think about where you work, and how tolerant your boss would be if there was a nagging problem going on and all people did was argue over social media on it – without really addressing the problem.

I assume they would be fired? Put on notice?

Are you the boss? How do you allow a major issue to continue to happen, without at least taking drastic steps to correct?

This is where I have a problem with our President. 

Now he has done a lot of good in his role, whether you want to agree with it or not. Economy is strong, unemployment is down, etc. 

He also established a School Safety Commission that addresses needed major improvements for safety in schools. 

That’s a great start, and I commend him for all that he has accomplished.

But while he is off tweeting nonsense, bashing rivals, and defending himself from being impeached, he is not continuing to lead in this area.

Now you can excuse his personal behavior all you want, but at the end of the day there is only one person that can be President. 

There are 327,000,000 people that live in the US, so we need to be incredibly critical about who fills that role.

In my opinion, President Trump doesn’t have the luxury of “not checking off most, if not all of the boxes.”

He can’t improve the economy, and then go on to praise Russia and North Korea.

He can’t lower unemployment, and then instruct people to disregard subpoenas.

He can’t create a school safety commission, and then cyberbully the press or those that don’t agree with him.

He can’t argue “witch-hunt” and “total exoneration” about the Mueller Report, and then refuse to acknowledge he was wrong about the Central Park 5 by calling for the death penalty, or even apologize to them.

That is why I am not President. Most boxes aren’t checked.

This is not house hunting where you can get a water view in exchange for smaller bedrooms.

You need the water view, large bedrooms, cul-de-sac, the whole shebang.

Now I didn’t agree with President Obama on many things, but I never questioned his ability to represent the office of the President with the utmost amount of professionalism and dignity.

And he had more boxes checked.

Now you can say “President Obama didn’t do enough as it relates to Mass Shootings”.

Ok, I agree.

But that shouldn’t be an excuse to not look at everything to improve it now.

Because if not, after the President leaves office (likely in 2024) - the next President will be saying the same thing about him.

So, I am calling on The President, Congress, and every politician in between – to stop all of the bullshit with all of the narratives, the defending, the attacks, the “whatever” you want to call it.

To help eliminate mass shootings, are you for more gun control? Great, make it your number one priority.

Don’t think guns are the problem? Great, figure out what the problem is, and make that your number one priority.

I don’t want to see another Tweet from any politician after the next Mass Shooting about how you are thinking about the families and the community.

I’ll call bullshit on that too because if you really are thinking about those families/community, you would actually listen to the person across from you and try to reach some sort of compromise to at least try to address the issue.

I’m tired of f&*king waiting.

And so are the 80% of the people who care about this issue; not the 20% of the population that only exercise their extreme opinions on social media.

Even if you don’t agree with everything I have written here, you at least have to agree that SOMETHING more must be done.

I’m sure we will be addressing this again soon, after the next mass shooting.

This article was written in honor of my friend Cathy “Cat” Campbell Green. Not that she would have necessarily agreed with everything I wrote, but she absolutely would have had an opinion – especially on school shootings. 

She tragically lost her life in a car accident, a mere hours after commenting on my last article as she frequently did. 

I moved to Florida the year before I graduated high school. I didn’t want to move towards the end of my high school tenure. Who would? My mother was very sick at the time, and she needed to be in a warm climate – so we had to go. Cathy was one of the first people I met, and she welcomed me with open arms, a big smile, and a strong personality. She was athletic and popular, and she dragged me to all of the parties and hang out areas around town including “JOHN PRINCE” – which I thought was a person, but it is actually a park. It was still a running joke all these years later. Our friendship continued into adulthood, where we would meet at Dolphins games to tailgate, even though I am a NY Jets fan. She was a hard worker, a dedicated Mom, extremely generous, and great friend to all. At her funeral, I got a chance to see people who I haven’t seen in over 30 years – which just goes to prove that in death as in life, Cathy had an incredible ability to make people smile.

If any of the articles that I have written have resonated with you, I ask you to consider donating to her gofundme page that will assist her children. I ask that you leave your name as “JOHN PRINCE”, as a tribute to her sense of humor. Rest in peace my friend, I will miss you.

https://www.gofundme.com/catherine-quotcatquot-campbell-green