{"id":21766,"date":"2018-03-09T10:20:48","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T17:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=21766"},"modified":"2018-03-09T10:22:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T17:22:59","slug":"opinion-when-you-vote-listen-to-the-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/03\/opinion-when-you-vote-listen-to-the-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: When you vote, listen to the children"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Evan<\/a>

Evan Barrett<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI cried \u2026 I was praying to God \u2026 I didn\u2019t want to die \u2026 I want to live to be old like you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guns and kids are tragically intertwined today in America.\u00a0 It shouldn\u2019t be so, but it is.\u00a0 From Columbine to Sandy Hook to Parkland and dozens more, our minds are haunted by the image of innocent young bodies brutally shattered and shredded by the effects of high-powered military weaponry.<\/p>\n

Public schools and kids. We could talk about colleges, or churches, or places of entertainment, but public schools are where this epidemic of gun violence threatens the bodies and haunts the souls of our children and grandchildren. Even here in Butte and Montana.<\/p>\n

These are, in fact, \u201cthe times that torment children\u2019s souls.\u201d We should listen to them.\u00a0 Listen to your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and neighbor kids.\u00a0 Shut out the cacophony of political argument to listen to the clear voices of the children whose message comes from the innocence and purity of their souls.<\/p>\n

Adult debates dwell on facts, figures, theories, abstractions.\u00a0\u00a0But, to our children, guns killing kids in schools is not an abstraction. That hit me like a lightning bolt just last week right here in Butte.<\/p>\n

Here, like elsewhere, school officials now conduct school \u201clockdown\u201d drills. It\u2019s the right and responsible thing to do. To the adult, that might seem like an extension of \u201cfire drills,\u201d long part and parcel of school life for school children. But, with today\u2019s communication, our children are well aware why we need lockdown drills. And when it is a real lockdown, those little hearts and souls feel sheer terror<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Last week, a young man was parading around the Butte hill \u201cexercising his constitutional rights\u201d with an assault rifle visibly strapped over his shoulder and a Second Amendment sign pasted to his back. Given where he was walking, several Butte grade schools rightfully had real lockdowns.<\/p>\n

Routine? Well, it wasn\u2019t routine to the kids. What I heard from one grade-school child was not routine \u2014 it was chilling. She said that they were locked down in a small room, instructed to protect themselves as much as possible, just in case. Here are her exact chilling words: \u201cI was really afraid. I cried the whole time. I was praying to God to not let me die. I didn\u2019t want to die. I want to live to be old like you. I cried.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiply by thousands and thousands of times the feelings of that single grade-school child and you begin to realize the immensity of the terror tearing at our children\u2019s souls all across America. This is not acceptable.<\/p>\n

I have long had strong feelings about the political and policy issues surrounding the gun debate, but I have not previously written publicly about the seemingly never-ending tribal ritual of the National Rifle Association finding creative ways to defend the indefensible \u2014 the gun manufacturers\u2019 lobby ritualistically developing diversionary tactics to avoid addressing the clear and present danger of weapons of war daily confronting our innocent children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n

Now, I respect the Second Amendment \u2014 was taught to shoot by my dad on a 22-short single-shot rifle.\u00a0 He taught me to respect the\u00a0 Second Amendment but also to respect the other 26 amendments.\u00a0 Check out, for example, the 26th\u00a0Amendment \u2014 the one that ensures the right to vote to those 18 years of age. That amendment provides focus for the powerful voices of the young who are taking a stand against the atrocities of military-style gun violence on children in schools.<\/p>\n

As younger people vote, as all of us vote, we should focus on the real fear of young students, of those words and thoughts that are seared in my brain: \u201cI was really afraid.\u00a0 I cried the whole time. I was praying to God to not let me die. I didn\u2019t want to die. I want to live to be old like you. I cried.\u201d<\/p>\n

That will be on the minds of the hundreds of thousands who will descend on Washington, D.C., on\u00a0March 24, led by America\u2019s school children. As America votes, it needs to be listening, first and foremost, to the children.<\/p>\n

Evan Barrett, of Butte, retired after 47 years working in Montana economic development, government, politics and education. He is an award-winning producer of Montana history films who continues to write columns and record commentaries, while occasionally teaching Montana history.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI cried \u2026 I was praying to God \u2026 I didn\u2019t want to die \u2026 I want to live to be old like you.\u201d Guns and kids are tragically intertwined today in America.\u00a0 It shouldn\u2019t be so, but it is.\u00a0 From Columbine to Sandy Hook to Parkland and dozens more, our minds are haunted by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":11715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864],"tags":[31,6834],"class_list":["post-21766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-butte","tag-guns-in-schools","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21768,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21766\/revisions\/21768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}