Patterico's Pontifications

5/9/2019

Highlands Ranch Students Walk Out on Gun Control Promoting Politicians [Updated]

Filed under: General — JVW @ 3:02 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Well, well, well — this is kind of a man bites dog story.

Vigils were held Wednesday night in Highlands Ranch as the community gathered to honor an 18-year-old shooting victim who was killed Tuesday, to recognize teenage heroes who intervened and likely stopped further carnage, and to thank first responders who rushed to the deadly scene.

The tone changed during the second vigil at Highlands Ranch High School, as STEM School Highlands Ranch students burst into a spontaneous demonstration, protesting politics and the media.

The protest, in the form of a walkout with chants, happened after Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democratic presidential hopeful, and Congressman Jason Crow, spoke to the crowd.

Students, several hundred strong, chanted “Mental health” and complained about the media in derogatory terms.

You can read the rest of this Denver Post article, yet the very gentle tease in the third paragraph quoted above is as close as you are going to get to the real story: that these students objected to these two Democrat members of Congress building a gun control podium upon the body of their dead classmate Kendrick Castillo — who incidentally died a hero’s death confronting the gunman — in order to push for laws that almost certainly would do nothing to prevent these further sorts of tragedies.

How awkward it must be for the Post, with a reliably left-leaning editorial board along with typical mainstream media myopia on virtually every topic, to have to confront the fact that these young men and women see through their agenda. After all, the conventional wisdom these days is that young people will usher in the next wave of progressive reforms by adopting any number of socialist, big government policies, even if, as the right-wing bed-wetters want to tell us, it means turning their back on Constitutional liberties. But maybe there really is a silent majority of teenagers and young adults who are tired of being force-fed this narrative and are beginning to understand that the crybullies’ agenda is riddled with logical fallacies. ABC News reports that the vigil, such that it was, was organized by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a fact that the Post didn’t see fit to mention. Imagine that.

It’s nice to know that a blowhard like Michael Bennett (it is certainly news to me that he is a 2020 Democrat Presidential candidate, but I guess all of them are right now) can get called on his nasty attempt to politicize a tragedy, and it should serve as a warning to ex-Army Ranger Jason Crow. He’s a freshman Congressman who beat a Republican incumbent in a swing district back in 2018, so maybe he will see this as a valuable lesson in not getting over his skis on an issue that has given his party fits in the Centennial State before. ABC News further reports that both Rep. Crow and the Brady Campaign have since apologized for turning the vigil away from supporting and comforting students and towards advocating for new gun laws, though nothing is mentioned about an apology from Sen. Bennett. Democrats, especially those who hope to present themselves as moderates, should really resist the urge to politicize every tragedy and turn it into one more reason to impose a big government solution.

UPDATE: Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward has the fantastic idea that this school ought to be renamed for Kendrick Castillo. I’m all for it.

– JVW

20 Responses to “Highlands Ranch Students Walk Out on Gun Control Promoting Politicians [Updated]”

  1. Sorry, my title for the post sucks, but I am having trouble thinking up an alternate one.

    Please do read the ABC News story. It provides much more detail than what the Denver Post recorded.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  2. Kudos to the students who saw what was happening and a wish that the parents of the young man who gave his life protecting his fellow students can find some comfort in the example of selfless bravery that was the last act on earth of their son.

    Thanks for this post, JVW… less rancor in the world is always a good thing.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  3. “Students Dis Gun Control Advocates”

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  4. Michael Bennett (it is certainly news to me that he is a 2020 Democrat Presidential candidate

    I knew it. He announced last week and there have been a couple of stories or mentions in columns about why he is doing it.

    , but I guess all of them are right now

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/us/michael-bennet-president-2020.html

    He joins a field so packed with candidates that it now includes six of his colleagues in the Senate and his former boss, John Hickenlooper, a past governor of Colorado.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  5. UPDATE: Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward has the fantastic idea that this school ought to be renamed for Kendrick Castillo. I’m all for it.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  6. Here’s an unintentional police demonstration on the need for serious gun control.

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  7. This sounds like an encore of the Paul Wellstone memorial in Minnesota in 2002 after he along with his wife and daughter and five others were killed in a plane crash while he was running for re-election.

    Walter Mondale was named the substitute candidate and the memorial service was truned intoa get out the vote rally.

    https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2008/10/six-years-later-wellstone-memorial-host-latimer-still-agonizes-over-events-p

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  8. Good for the kids! Bravo, kids!

    nk (dbc370)

  9. This sounds like an encore of the Paul Wellstone memorial in Minnesota in 2002 after he along with his wife and daughter and five others were killed in a plane crash while he was running for re-election.

    That’s probably a good analogy. The Wellstone event was billed as a memorial but in retrospect it seems clear that the organizers intended for it to be a political rally all along. In the same way, the event on Tuesday night was billed as a vigil but it was organized by the Brady Campaign so you have to believe that they meant to push gun control from the very beginning.

    Furthermore, we have the fact that both the House and the Senate were in session on Tuesday, so either Rep. Crow and Sen. Bennett were playing hooky from their legislative duties or else they made a point of hurrying back to Colorado to bask in the media attention, the latter of which, if true, would be utterly appalling.

    JVW (54fd0b)

  10. Students, several hundred strong, chanted “Mental health” and complained about the media in derogatory terms.

    Mental health screening and background checks is more snake oil than assault weapons bans and other proposed changes in gun control laws.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/standing-against-psychiatrys-crazes-11556920766

    This is about the the sex-change gender dysmorphia thing – which by th way, another story, led to acourt in canada ordering afather not to cha;e;nger what his 14-year old was claiming – bt he talks in more general terms too:

    Dr. McHugh believes psychiatrists’ first order of business ought to be to determine whether a mental disorder is generated by something the patient has (a disease of the brain), something the patient is (“overly extroverted” or “cognitively subnormal”), something a patient is doing (behavior such as self-starvation), or something a patient has encountered (a traumatic or otherwise disorienting experience).

    Practitioners too often practice what he calls “DSM checklist psychiatry”—matching up symptoms from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders with the goal of achieving diagnosis—rather than inquiring deeply into the sources and nature of an affliction.

    A checklist is the purpose </B/ of the DSM? The criiteria are reliable (that is different people with the same training will put people in the same pigeonholes) but not valid. It was designed to facilitate billing.

    More from Dr. Paul McHugh, the man who closed the Gender Identity (sex-change) clinic at Johns Hopkins in 1979 (recently re-opened – in 2017 – as the Center for Transgender Health:

    “I came into psychiatry with the perception that it had not matured as a clinical science in which rational practices are directed by information on the causes and mechanisms of the disorders,” Dr. McHugh says. “Every other medical discipline has that.” He still regards psychiatry as badly in need of “organizing principles.”

    among the fads mentioned in the article are hystero-epilepsy (copycat epilepsy) and anorexia nervosa and post-traumatic stress disorder (the last two being conditions exacerbated by mental health professionals. he says the israeli Defense Force

    take the soldiers out, and they tell them the following: ‘This is perfectly normal; you need to be out of battle for a while. Don’t think that this is a disease that’s going to hurt you, this is like grief. You’re going to get over it, it’s normal. And within a few weeks, after a little rest, we’re going to put you back with your comrades and you’re going to go back to work.’ And they all do.”

    By contrast, American psychiatrists say: “ ‘You’ve had a permanent wound. You’re going to be on disability forever. And this country has mistreated you by putting you in a false war.’ They make chronic invalids of them. That’s the difference.”

    Then there’s frontal lobotomies, insulin shock therapy, and primitive chemically induced seizure therapies, and recovered-memory (which led to criminal prosecutions of innocent people.

    Dr. Paul McHugh is going on 88.

    Sammy Finkelman (102c75)

  11. BTW, this Bennet person is the brother of the NYT Bennet person, the one who said that Sarah Palin shot Gabby Hayes.

    nk (dbc370)

  12. Kendrick Castillo should give us hope about the young. He responded like a man.

    mg (8cbc69)

  13. I’m grateful for the courage of these kids to step away from the propaganda and to refuse to be used. I’m sure the pressure was intense to just sit down and shut up like it is in so many other areas that the left deems the debate over.

    It reminds me that there is still hope to take back the culture. Just like this young lady is trying to do in high school sports which ruined her chance at state thanks to the radical left’s ideology on transgenderism.

    https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/05/06/8th-place-high-school-girls-speak-out-on-getting-beat-by-biological-boys/

    They deserve our support.

    NJRob (532adc)

  14. students don’t want to be shot in school. the media should look into who’s behind the walk out. this may be some right wing charter school. the media should do its job and find out whats going on here.

    lany (411ef4)

  15. nk,

    Consarn it, but I think you have the wrong Gabby.

    https://travsd.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/consarn-it-the-george-gabby-hayes-story/

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  16. 13, that’s like Winona Ryder’s Veronica telling the one teacher to shove it with her vigil at the end of Heathers.

    urbanleftbehind (bccba5)

  17. Thank you for the correction @ 15, Kevin. I didn’t have time to check it before posting, because I had a pot of rice on the stove and I needed to turn off the flame at exactly 13 minutes.

    nk (dbc370)

  18. Renaming the school is a GREAT Idea.

    rcocean (1a839e)

  19. It saddens me that we aren’t seeing the response to this thread that Trump threads get. Where are all the people that say they are conservative and bash Trump for destroying conservativism, yet don’t have a word to say on this subject of students refusing to silently support leftist propaganda?

    NJRob (ad0917)

  20. They did support a form of leftist propaganda – “mental health treatment” – it’s just one that gets trotted out by the NRA as a counter proposal. Real leftists are against it being mandatory in any way, and also claim there’s no ability to predict violence, but it is leftist to believe in that and to support funding.

    The reason this came up almost spontaneously is that the school had been warned (in general terms) about “a repeat of Columbine” – so we have this quack remedy of “menral health treatment” being abl to prevent it.

    There was a big controversy going on there. One mother had, at that time anonymously, complained to the county school board late last year about students being suicidal and violent and that there could be a possible repeat of Columbine (7 miles away, and 20 years ago) and that several students had been the victim of sexual assault and nothng was being done.

    It was evidently a hodgepodge of unrelated complaints, and the thought occurs to me that she might have had a connection with people who wanted to shut the charter school down because it was competition for regular unionized schools.

    Anyway, Douglas School District official Daniel Winsor had writtten STEM school on December 19 that the concerns were very serious and needed to be looked into. In January, the school sued the complainer for defamation, and in February, Penelope Eucker, the school’s executive director, wrote all aparents of children at the school to deny the allegations saying that they wanted them to know the depth of the depravity of this person and to apolohize if they found the accusations as offensive as they did. [?]

    After the assault happened, she said, in a statement last Thursday (May 10) that:

    “While STEM took the allegations seriously, our investigation revealed no evidence to support any of the allegations raised in the anonymous complaint.”

    The original complainer – the one sued by the school for defamation – claimed vindication on CNN.

    “When you don’t listen to parents’ concerns, when you don’t listen to teachers’ concerns…these are the elements that we need for a perfect storm, for somethng like a Columbine, or some kind of imminent threat to our chidrens’ safety in the school.”

    Meanwhile it has come out, according to a former student, Kevin Cole, who appeared on the TODAY shw, that one of the attackers, Devon Erickson, would hint about a massacre – he’d get close and put his arms arroud you and say “Don’t come to school tomorrow” He says they weren’t surpised, and it was him, and during the entire time he was at STEM he always joked about it.

    https://nypost.com/2019/05/10/colorado-school-was-warned-before-shooting-of-repeat-of-columbine/

    Sammy Finkelman (ec94de)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0858 secs.