I took time out of my busy Saturday morning to attend the "We March for Our Lives" rally that was staged on the west lawn of the Sebastian County Courthouse and was attended by 150-175 people. I even went so far as to air it on Facebook Live on our Facebook page.
An officer with the Fort Smith Police Deprtment estimated the crowd at 150. In an effort to be generous -- lest I be tarred and feathered by the "nonpartisan" organizers of the event -- I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say there may have been 175 people there. There is a story about the event printed elsewhere on the website.
The bottom line? Under normal circumstances, I would not have attended the event. But after our journalistic efforts prevented this "nonpartisan" group from holding the rally on the Northside High School Campus in violation of school district policy, we were "called out" to come to the event and report what we saw.
The fact that we brought attention to and prevented the original plan of holding the event on school property did not bode well with several of our fine citizens. I was particularly roasted by the president of the UAFS Young Democrats and several of his friends despite the fact that I openly supported their right to rally.
Just not on school property. Which would have been against school district policy. And which, according to a phone call I received, would have sparked a demand for a counter-demonstration from a political action group headquartered in and around Harrison.
So, Today in Fort Smith prevented a KKK rally and kept us off the national news on which we would have been vilified for our "hillbilly ignorance" followed by the phrase "they voted for Trump".
You're welcome.
I don't like to "bottom line" you guys twice in the same column, but I have never been a guy that is hesitant to say, "I told you so" when I told you so.
In fact, that's what I live for.
I told you so. There was absolutely nothing "nonpartisan" about the event held on Saturday morning and the only reason the organizers didn't fight to keep it on a public school campus and adhere to the School District's "nonpartisan" policy is because --from the outset -- "nonpartisian" was not part of the equation.
(Also, being a big fan of irony this is the part where I point out the fact that despite thwarted efforts to hold the event at Northside, not a single Grizzly spoke at the event. Carry on with your majesty.)
I didn't ask any of the uniformed officers their political stance on anything but I'm pretty sure they --and I -- were possibly the only people in the crowd that has ever voted for a Republican.
They say there are approximately 260,000 people in the Fort Smith Demographic Marketing Area. That means 259,825 of those folks chose not to attend the rally.
The event was exactly what I had predicted it would be..a collection of impressionable, well-meaning, and passionate young people who are either uninformed about the issue at hand or have been manipulated to the point of blind allegiance to an agenda and a gaggle of "never-Trumpers" who would use the betting booth at an organized cockfight to promote that agenda.
The "Democrats" were showcased and while they didn't self-identify as such, it was plain to see who was playing puppetmasters at the event. The "Hey Trump...stop killing our kids and read a book" sign was a dead giveaway.
Go to the website for "We March to Live" and look at their Amazon store. Then come back and tell me the part about "nonpartisan" again.
God bless those who are seemingly concerned about the tragic and inexcusable tragedies of school shootings. God bless those who used their Constituional rights to free speech (the First Amendment) to try and invalidate the Constitutional rights (the Second Amendment) of those who see the horror of the situation for what it is.
Can we benefit from better background checks, making an effort to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and work on issues that foster a society where someone -- anyone -- wakes up one morning and decides to shoot up a school?
That's a given. But as I was driving back from the event this morning ABC Radio News had a soundbite of a nineteen-year-old speaking at the "We March" rally in Washington D.C.
And I quote: "This is not about bump stocks. This is JUST THE BEGINNING. We will not stop until there is no more OPPORTUNITY for gun violence!"
So no one can have a gun. Except for the criminals, who already ignore the ineffective man-made laws in their effort to pursue their criminal enterprises. I know it sounds hackneyed, but doing drugs, rape, bank robbery, pedophilia and spitting on the sidewalk are all illegal.
But we still get to print Mugshots every day.
Be you Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Socialist, Whig, transgender or transmuted, atheist or evangelistic, young or old, educated or stupid as a box of rocks there is one truth in all of this.
If we allow the government to "take away" our guns then the only people who will have guns are the criminals and the government, which now days is pretty much the same thing.
No one here condones "gun violence". I have children and grandchildren and I want them to be safe and protected.
But we cannot rely on partisan "nonpartisan" solutions to stop criminals from being criminals.
It doesn't work.