On March 24 we saw the students’ “March for our Lives” promoting safe schools and environments conducive for learning. Resultantly, there’s much talk concerning closing gun show loopholes, improving background checks, raising the age non-military trained persons can purchase firearms, and funding for resource officers and/or arming teachers in schools. These are all debatable issues.
However, what appears on news feeds are the more drastic far right and far left campaigns. This, in turn, creates the appearance that you are either for or against the 2nd Amendment, tyranny, taking all guns away, or conversely arming every adult with open carry permits, etc. Tribalism and name-calling begins, and people become swayed toward the extreme ideologies that appear to be the only available schools of thought. Although this negativity may be highlighted as the norm, there really are great efforts from people of all backgrounds to work together or at least disagree respectfully.
So, kudos for the children who are marching for what they believe is right and learning their civic rights by using them. Kudos to responsible and level-headed gun owners who recognize there is no legitimate nor serious threat to the 2nd Amendment by half of America. Kudos for not believing the rhetoric from conspiracy theorists who say each of these attacks on Americans in churches, elementary schools, high schools, concerts, movie theatres are all just a hoax in order for the government to take our guns away. Yes, those people exist. So again, kudos to you!
Next, I want to talk about teachers, specifically, the walk-outs from teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona. All these states boast low tax rates. With low investments in the state comes low return for the people of the state. Tragically, education is among the first “commodities” to be gutted, whether in programs or teacher’s pay.
Consider the workload of a teacher. They are not only the educators of history, math, sciences, arts, and our language, but they must also be the guides of morals and ethics, aids for not only the physical health of our children but their mental health and well-being as well, and they must do this with fewer resources every year. They often spend their personal resources, both time and money, on creating the best learning environment for their pupils.
No matter which side of the fence you find yourself on with private schools, public schools, religious schools, or charter schools, I believe most Americans would agree that our children’s education and well-being are a high priority (if not the highest). Are our values reflected when we vote?
Politicians boast about advocating funding of education of our youth every election year, but does that funding keep up with inflation? Do teachers’ salaries? I was curious, so I researched it: The average salary for Minnesota school teachers in 1974-75 was $12,214. Adjusting for inflation, that is equal to $64,967 today. The average teacher salary in Minnesota in 2018 is $57,346.
How much do we value having well-educated grandkids? With regards to employment competition, can we expect to have better educators (therefore better student experiences) with fewer incentives or greater? If you had troubles raising your teenager(s), think about having 20-30 of them in the same room with you for three quarters of the calendar year. Do you think teachers do it for the money? I think the answer is no.
Democracy cannot survive without an educated people. We need citizens who understand how and why our society operates the way it does. Teachers are the keystone to the survival of our representative democracy. I’ll leave you with this quote which ties my two thoughts in this article together.
“The suggestion of arming the teachers in response to school shootings is really not surprising. As a nation we have hoisted pretty much every social problem onto teachers, expecting schools to be the solution for everything from unemployment to teen pregnancy and the war on drugs, all the while cutting their funding and lambasting them as lazy and selfish when they demand to be paid. They are solution, scapegoat, and sacrificial lamb rolled into one.” -Jason Reed
Cheers.
References:
Purchasing power in 1974: https://www.leg.state.mn.us/docs/pre2003/other/910162/summary.pdf
Inflation calculator: https://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_calculators/inflation_rate_calculator.asp
2018 Teacher salary: http://www.teacherportal.com/salary/Minnesota-teacher-salary
Steve Jones says
In your first paragraph, you left out one of the proposals that the people who marched were calling for: the ban on “assault weapons”. If you had included it, it would have blown away the point you were trying to make in following paragraphs, that “there is no legitimate nor serious threat to the 2nd Amendment.”
Aaron Bishop says
Hello Steve,
Thank you for your reply. I did leave out banning assault weapons (or some people say “assault-style weapons” to include the AR-15) in the first paragraph. I don’t think if I had my argument would have failed, and here’s why.
Assault weapons were banned in 1994 for ten years in response to mass shootings in the early 1990s. (See: The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act,). Multiple attempts to renew the ban had failed, and the time to renew the ban came and went in 2004, so the ban was ultimately lifted.
So, a ban on assault weapons has been done already and the U.S. Courts did not strike the law down, meaning they found it to be constitutional. So the courts, by not striking down the 1994 assault weapons ban, necessarily must have found such a ban did not threaten the 2nd Amendment which reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The right to bear arms were not infringed. Only *certain* arms. Just as we cannot now carry RPG’s or drive tanks willy-nilly, we are already limited by the interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. Who decides which weapons civilians can and cannot have? Where is the line to be drawn? Is a nuclear weapon an “arm” protected under the U.S. Constitution, and therefore any citizen should have the right to own and operate one? I use this extreme to show the language in the 2nd Amendment is up to interpretation by the courts, for which they did consider in the assaults weapons ban of ’94 and found them to not be covered.
Of course, administrations change as do courts. But precedent stands for now.
So I don’t believe my point would have been blown out of the water. It was the courts that decided there is no serious threat *by half of America* to the 2nd Amendment when it comes to assault weapons ban.
I say all of this in a way not to reflect my own personal views on the matter. I’m trying to be as matter-of-fact as I can be. Being raised here in Fillmore County, of course I know good people who own some of these weapons marked as assault-style weapons. They are responsible gun owners. I also know people who are victims of gun violence. We can’t escape that, even here in Fillmore County. I recognize their fear as legitimate as well. How couldn’t I? They have lived horrors and don’t wish that upon themselves or anyone else, and will do what they can from a good place of heart.
So, again, thank you for your response to my post. I recognize I can be misinterpreting events concerning the ’94 ban (I was only 4 at the time!), so I apologize for errors.
Also, you may have noticed this online version is longer than that which was in print due to forgivable human error (it happens!), so I believe the print will be out with the full version (as seen now on the Journal website) next week as well.
Cheers.