New Jersey students march to give up civil rights?

This past Saturday students participated in nearly two dozen marches around the state in support of the March for Our Lives in Washington DC. In the past, massive protests and marches have been in support for equal rights or acknowledgement of rights. This march seeks to diminish one of the bill of rights.

I understand the raw emotion of the kids who survived the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. It is unimaginable to be witness to such horror at any age, let alone being a kid in high school and seeing it right before your eyes in your own school. But the arrogance, vitriol and vile language from the major players such as senior David Hogg is unacceptable and hurts their cause. Hogg gave several interviews and made TV appearances where he cursed out and totally dismissed anyone who might have a different point of view from his. Even if it's a point of view taken from a lifetime of experience and a deeper understanding of civics and the Constitution than his.

If I spoke to someone in public the way he has for the past month, my dad would smack me in the back of the head for shaming the family in such a disrespectful, coarse manner. What did I know about workings of government and law when I was David Hogg's age? About the same as Hogg, nothing. Yet we let these students emote and blather on to effect public policy. Their emotion and anger is understandable, but their ignorance and arrogance is intolerable.

The gun debate is complex and varies state to state. Our state has some of the most strict gun laws in the country and with Governor Murphy in office, they could get even more restrictive. Not for the criminal element or mentally deranged who would do the public harm, but for law abiding citizens who will be turned into criminals for simply trying to exercise their Second Amendment right to legally own firearms. Some of the background checks may need to be tightened up in some states and make it more difficult to bring guns up to states like ours. But to continue to erode the rights of lawful gun owners does nothing to make us all safe. Quite the opposite.

At Cherry Hill High School East a teacher was suspended for pointing out the fact that the students there were vulnerable. Why? Because the lefties in charge in that so called "liberal" district are afraid of guns and wouldn't allow the THREE "resource officers" on duty carry a gun. After long and loud school board meeting in the aftermath of the teacher's suspension, it was agreed the officers need to be armed. There was an incident last week where a kid opened fire and shot his girlfriend at school. An armed officer responded and killed the shooter. If he had not been there, there carnage could have been far worse.

Do we need more security and safety precautions at schools? Unfortunately, most definitely! But taking away the rights of lawful gun owners is dead wrong. There are over 300 million guns in this country. The idea of banning them is ludicrous. The obvious result would be that only the criminal element would hang on to them. The idea of sending hundreds or thousands of kids into a building to learn like we did two hundred years ago is so outdated and stupid, but we're reluctant to change that for a variety of reasons. So we must make it even more cumbersome and expensive and do more to secure our schools, and yes unfortunately that may mean more guns on school grounds.

These marches of this past weekend will do little, if anything, to stop violence. These guns have been around for decades. What's changed? Society has changed. Families have disintegrated and the government has become provider to far too many mothers and kids. Many have become desensitized to violence whether through movies, video games, cyber bullying, anonymous threats and a lack of respect on all sides. The same lack of respect that David Hogg has been spewing for the last month. I'm sure he thinks he's doing the righteous thing and the opposition be damned. He'll live to regret his behavior some time in the near future. Hopefully we won't be on the receiving end of what he hopes for: a future dictated by uncontrolled emotion and a profound lack of understanding of all the facts. The old saying, "children should be seen and not heard" is long forgotten in today's world, but it was never more pertinent than this weekend.

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