Sunday, March 18, 2018

Incidents

A couple of things that happened on March 14, 2018:
A teacher in Seaside, California accidentally fired a gun in his classroom. He was pointing the weapon at the ceiling at the time, and it was part of a public safety class, but three students were injured. Dennis Alexander, who is also a city councilman and a reserve police officer in Seaside, has been placed on administrative leave while school officials try and figure out just exactly what was going on. Hard to say exactly how far the investigation will go, since Mister Alexander also serves as Mayor Pro Tem. In these little towns, people end up having to do extra jobs. Like in Mayberry, where Otis the town drunk was also a sheriff's deputy. On a day when thousands of school kids walked out of their classes to draw attention to gun violence, this incident spikes the irony chart.
Meanwhile, across the country in Columbia, South Carolina Dylan Roof's younger sister Morgan was arrested for bringing guns onto the campus of her high school. If the name sounds familiar, Dylan Roof was the young man who walked into an historic black church in 2015 and killed nine members of the congregation there for bible study. Dylan has since been sentenced to death for his crimes. His little sister announced her intentions, more or less, on Snapchat the morning of March 14, announcing: “I hope it’s a trap and y’all get shot. We know it’s fixing to be nothing but black people walkin out anyway." Apparently the nut doesn't fall far from the crazy racist killer tree. South Carolina's governor, Henry McMaster, said that “potential tragedy was avoided” at Flora High on Wednesday. He also called on the state General Assembly to pass legislation requiring police officers to be present at every school. 
These were not the only things that happened on March 14. Thousands of peaceful demonstrations took place to remind us all of the tragedy of the murder of seventeen at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Students left school and walked out. In a Florida courtroom, the young man responsible for those deaths was being arraigned. 
His plea? 
Not guilty.
And, as the sage once wrote, so it goes. 

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