I need to apologize. The guy was the real thing. I don’t know that he’s actually a neighbor. He’s also not very organized. Just this weekend, he was asking for people to chair various things - marketing campaign to parents, sign-in, creating posters, etc. - all things that maybe you’d want to have in place less than a week before. I’m going to try and volunteer to help, but my Dad isn’t doing well at all right now and I am housebound with only some help a couple of afternoons a week. So I’ve no idea who this is going to work. We’ll be assembling at a rather large mall, 90% of which is closed. So there’s a huge parking lot with no cars. But it’s on a very busy road so I doubt anybody’s going to be marching. Besides, it’s Can-Am week here. Lots of Canadians come down to play golf during the winter so apparently, we celebrate their presence with a week just devoted to Canadian things. My kid is all excited because he may finally get to try poutine (French fries and cheese curds topped with a brown gravy). It might actually be interesting to talk to a few Canadians and get their perspective on all of this. Who knows, they may be asked to fund their own wall soon.
At the military school he attended they probably didn’t have ammunition. On the gun range only if they did any marksmanship work, but that may not have been the case. They might have drilled with old M-1s, WWII vintage, unloaded.
The military and other schools know you don’t keep ammunition around firearms, it’s the makings of disaster.
They did it!
I’m impressed with what the youth from Parkland have accomplished, good article in The New Yorker. Some of the photos of the placards being carried made me laugh, I needed the laugh. I loved the “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at IKEA”. This energy needs to be carried into November. My new slogan #TrumpTrump
That might leave room for misinterpretation?
But I LOVE the “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at IKEA”! 
The Parkland teens are learning how nasty politics in the U.S. has become. These teenagers will have some thick skin after this mess.
Trumptrump refers to the game of bridge of course, basically beat Trump at his own game.
Wow. I see it’s an uphill battle until that kind of influence-buying is made illegal and terminated.
(BTW it is illegal here.) Are the wealthy American arms dealers also selling the bandages?
I know, but how many trump supporters will know that? Most would just think “2 trumps are better than one”.
Then there is the thought that more the NRA sticks to their traditional behavior the more it drives the youth away from them, and their parents and grandparents?
MAGA, learn to play bridge.
And they’ll be VOTING soon too.
A photo of one of the students supposedly tearing up the constitution is going around social media. The one I saw was the poorest photoshop job I’ve seen online in years the graphics person must think we are dumb.
I really liked that they not only had a powerful message, but a direct call to action and a direction to take moving forward. The whole thing was very well organized and executed. They called upon people to vote and talked about pre-registration for people who will be 18 by the time of the mid-term elections. There were even a lot of volunteers going around with voter registration forms at the end so that people could register to vote then and there.
(Matt/others: sorry for lack of a link or anything. Don’t currently have time to research/look one up. I was there this weekend, so all info above is based on firsthand account.)
She was actually ripping up a paper with a target on it - used for target practice with guns. I’ll try to find the actual story that I read this in earlier today. It showed the original and the photoshopped version. That particular student is the one that called for 6 minutes and 17 seconds of silence when she spoke. Six minutes was all it took to bring down 17 students and teachers. There’s been a lot of talk about that moment and the impact it made.
I didn’t find the original story I had read, but this one will do. It shows the actual item she ripped up and discusses how this alternative photo has gone viral:
That silence was extremely powerful, and one of (if not the) most powerful moments there. Emma didn’t call for a moment of silence; she just went into it after going through and naming all of the victims, and just prior to that mentioning the amount of time that the gunman was active for. I also very much got the impression that other people up on stage with her didn’t know that she had this planned. The fact that she didn’t announce a moment of silence or anything, but just went quiet, stopping talking and staring forward was brilliant and part of what made it so powerful. In the audience it left everyone unsure, questioning what was going on or happening. Was this a moment of silence for the 17? Was this to represent the amount of time the gunman was active for? Or was it something else? Personally, I felt that you could tell from the look in Emma’s face that this was intentional; but no one at the time could know for sure. Because no one knew what was going on, there were even a few people that tried to start a chant of “never again” a few times during the silence (did not get picked up). Towards the end of the silence, someone even came up and was whispering to Emma looking concerned (which is what makes me think that the other people on stage mostly had no clue.) The guy hadn’t been next her trying to figure out what was going on very long when her phone alarm on the podium went off, and she instantly began speaking again.
“Since the time that I came out here,” she said, “it has been 6 minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest.”
“Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job,” she said, and left the stage.
(quote from CNN article linked below)
The silence wasn’t even 6 minutes long (6 minutes 20 seconds being total time on stage, not length of silence), but about 4 minutes 25 seconds roughly; yet it felt like an eternity that just stretched on. An eternity where the crowd had no idea what exactly was going on or when it would end. That uncertainty, the lack of control or knowledge of what was going on; that’s what made this moment so profound and powerful.
In respect to accuracy and having multiple sources:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/emma-gonz-c3-a1lez-spends-6-minutes-20-seconds-in-silence-to-remember-parkland-shooting/ar-BBKEdCV
We’re so used to a noisy, non-stop in-your-face world…silence can be so powerful, especially when it’s not expected. I am so impressed with Emma…I wonder where life will take her? She’s a natural leader, wise & fearless…those who try to pervert her words & motives, & those of the other students, are beyond despicable. I hope she (& they) never lose their voice & momentum.
My son’s take is that most of these kids have spent enough time on the internet to have seen nastiness of a type that many of those from older generations can hardly imagine, and has already developed some seriously thick skin. In the match-up between the NRA and these teens, I take a fair amount of comfort from this notion!
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Of course, you’re “preaching to the choir” on this forum. 
I’m tired of hearing “2nd Amendment rights”…the times have changed and the guns have changed (understatement!), we’re LONG overdue for changes to our laws.