As the media and the government continue to use the tragic shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school to push their various agendas, it is important to remember that psychopaths who want to kill a lot of people—will do so with or without a gun. In fact, the deadliest attack on a school to ever take place on US soil was done so without a single round being fired.
In Bath Township, Michigan, 44 people, mostly children, lost their lives when a man by the name of Andrew Kehoe blew up the town's school. This attack is often disregarded by history as it paints a different narrative outside of the normal problem, reaction, solution of grabbing guns. As a result, it has largely been erased from the narrative.
As Smithsonian.com reports, the local institute of learning was Bath Consolidated School, built only five years earlier to replace the scattered one-room schools of the surrounding farmland. It had 314 students from around the region, many the sons and daughters of farmers. Some students were bused in, and all took classes with their peers over the course of elementary and high school.
Kehoe, an electritian, had snapped and become angry after the town's taxes levied on his farm had forced him into foreclosure.
“He was notified last June that the mortgage on his farm would be foreclosed, and that may have been the circumstance that started the clockwork of anarchy and madness in his brain,” claimed the New York Times.
So, while he worked at the school as an electrician, he wired it with explosives. Luckily for half of the students in the school, the timer on one of Kehoe's homemade explosives failed to go off so the tragedy could've been far worse. However, the catastrophe resulting from the 38 children and 6 adults who died was still utterly horrific.
“There was a pile of children about five or six under the roof and some of them had arms sticking out, some had legs, and some just their heads sticking out. They were unrecognizable because they were covered with dust, plaster and blood,” wrote local author Monty J. Ellsworth in his 1927 account, The Bath School Disaster. “It is a miracle that many parents didn’t lose their minds before the task of getting their children out of the ruins was completed. It was between five and six o’clock that evening before the last child was taken out.”
Prior to setting off the explosives in the school, Kehoe murdered his family and burned down his farm. After the bombing, he blew up his car, killing himself and others nearby.
The story barely registered a blip in the national headlines at the time and was almost immediately wiped away by the news of Charles Lindbergh’s successful first-ever nonstop transatlantic flight two days after the bombing in 1927. And because Kehoe didn't fit the stereotypical definition of a "terrorist" at the time, the United States quickly forgot about.
According to TIME, In the 1920s, the terrorists whom most Americans feared were anarchists. Newsreels regularly reported anarchist-related bombings and attacks in the U.S. and abroad. Anarchists were scary—but they were also characterized as shady foreigners. When people thought of anarchists, they thought of men like Sacco and Vanzetti, whose final appeal against death sentences had failed a few weeks before Kehoe’s attack. (They would be executed in August.) White men in small towns did not fit the mold.
Indeed, there is no mold for mass killers and instead of talking about solutions to stop the problem, Americans tend to focus more on the symptoms—as they are easier to use for divide.
Until we have a rational discussion on mental health and the direct role of psychotropic drugs used in most of these killings, all the gun banter in the world will not stop the next psychopath from inflicting harm on the world's most vulnerable—with or without bullets.
I looked up a list of which industries spend the most on lobbying, the drug industry is number one, the gun industry was not even on the list of the top 20. I bet the ratio of advertising on the TV news is about the same. The politicians and media will never ever go against the drug companies whose products come with a warning "may cause suicidal actions". They will continue to scapegoat legal guns. The other day they were claiming that Columbine was the first school shooting, I guess to push the false narrative that only semi auto rifles are used in school shootings. I guess they want people to forget about the guy who shot 45 people with a bolt action rifle on a campus.
That's a great point... Following the money can often root out sub-motives! There are deep phycological problems in our society that need to be dealt with. As long as people scapegoat guns the real problem goes unaddressed... And grows!
Well said: https://steemit.com/news/@clarityofsignal/extensive-post-reveals-anomalies-and-child-actors-involved-with-parkland-school-shooting-in-florida-on-february-14-2018
Even some of the above info was flagged on steemit.
Guns are NOT the problem! The breakdown of the family, of society, the lack of people knowing how to deal with seriously troubled people and now the growing threats from terrorism have created powder kegs that have turned into horrific situations.... That yes, some involved guns, but disturbed people will find ways to cause havoc and kill and reign terror whether or not they have access to guns!!
Anyone recall 9-11? Oklahoma City? How many bombings in Europe? How many cars/trucks/vans ramming into terrified crowds?
It seems there are some fundamentals of human decency and respect for all humanity that is lacking In an ever growing group of people...
Maybe that's the root of the problem?? Just a thought... but whatever the true problem is, it isn't guns... There are ample statistics that show that the cities that have the strongest gun laws also have the highest rates of gun crimes and gun related deaths. Criminals will ALWAYS find ways to get guns. Why disarm law abiding citizens???
People who are determined to do harm to others will find a way! Period. Unfortunately humans are way too creative when it comes to the ways they can maul, maim and murder.
Maybe it's possible that people can practice kindness and understanding... Reach across social and ethnic boarders and get to know one another... Maybe that can do something to change the root problem.... Instead of blaming inanimate objects again.... Just a thought...
Well said, I agree with you. Gun-free zones are like ice cream trucks for terrorists, it's a perfect place to commit crimes. Until we can get rid of the swamp in the Judicial System, people need to take advantage of the second amendment.
"Gun-free zones are like ice cream trucks for terrorists"!! Love that phrase and will tell my retired cop hubby who will get a kick out of that too. Thanks!!
It's been said a million times but it's still true... If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns! And that just leaves law abiding citizens sitting ducks for the outlaws... Yeah that really makes a lot of sense.
Good article, and I fully agree with your points about mental health, and the pharmacuetical industry.
Peoples behavior can be influenced by what they see on TV. If not, what would be the point of advertising.
Hollywood and the Main Stream Media need to step up and admit their roles in these shootings. We must demand that they do so.
I would like to start seeing protest outside of Theaters that show movies, glorifying the misuse of firearms.
Yes that's absolutely true! I do think part of the problem is that generations of kids have been exposed to seeing bodies on TV and movie screens and their gaming screens.... And these bodies are reduced to "things" instead of people.
So many of these CSI type shows showing crime scenes and autopsies and these images stop being human beings. I think when people watch too much of that, especially starting at too young an age, they disconnect from a sense of true respect for life we should have for every living thing on this Earth... And don't even get me started about some of these video "games" where winning is measured in body count. Come on, do we really need "studies" to know what that does to the human heart, mind, pysche, spirit and soul of our youth... Of our entire society?
You are right... Advertisers spend billions to have a chance to influence us for 30 seconds during Super Bowl... Doesn't that tell any thinking person how much your attention is worth... What we focus on matters! Glorifying guns is irresponsible!! So is letting kids watch hate filled content that robs them of respect for their fellow humans on this planet.
It seems to me this is one major component of the problem... But it's still easier to blame those darn guns...
It was almost 100 years ago. Do you expect it to have more coverage than a mass murder that happened a fortnight ago?
I don't get all this meandering by gun lobbyists.
Get rid of guns, and less people die. It's simple really, to those of us in the rest of the world.
Yeah mental health is an issue. But if I'm mentally unstable, would you like me to have trouble getting my hands on a gun, or do you think I should be able to stroll into a store and arm myself?
Do you use the same "mental health" justification for terrorism, or is that different because some of those people come from others countries (even if it's multiple generations back)
Yeah because banning guns in Brazil and Venezuela did wonders for those countries right? The problem with your argument:
We could be as safe as Mexico or Honduras!
There is a much bigger picture or conspiracy to this. If you do the research this isn't about kids dying in schools, that's the tactic being used to make the citizens disarm themselves. I am British, we have no guns here by law, yet guns are still around...
Over the last decade the US government, Homeland security in particular ordered millions and millions of rounds of hollow tipped ammunition. Its sole purpose is to kill. Yet homeland security only deals with threats on its own land, so they assume that they are going to lose control of the failing, enslaving system that citizens are waking up too and hence will use shoot to kill ammo against any that revolt! They are now trying to make the citizens voluntarily disarm themselves through what they think is a good thing, leaving just the government and criminals who won't hand them in willingly...
Shitty place to be in the world right now in my opinion.
guns might still be around - but how many? When there's about 50 times as many guns per capita (just a guess), then that also means that guns are 50 times more likely to be used.
Why it is so bad for citizens to disarm themselves? Why do citizens need to be armed? armed citizens are likely to use those arms on each other, and that is what we see.
Didn't stop mass murder with guns in France, it's a gun free country. The UK and China have mass knife stabbings. So banning guns is not a solution. Do take notice, though, that most mass shootings actually happen in gun free zones AKA Target Zones.
Gun free areas are soft targets because they know they can inflict the most damage in the shortest period of time without interruption.
"Get rid of guns, and less people die. It's simple really, to those of us in the rest of the world."
The word you are looking for is simplistic and does not apply to the US. Here in America our experience is that the more guns Americans own the fewer gun homicides and fatal accidents there are.
If you are mentally unstable does that mean you are too stupid to ask a gang member for a gun? Are you too stupid to buy gasoline or rent a Home Depot truck? We already forbid the insane from legal gun ownership.
If someone is a homicidal maniac we are supposed to pretend that somehow being denied a legal gun will keep people safe from them?
Really the solution is to not let known homicidal maniacs like Nicolas Cruz walk around free.
Are the terrorists taking pharmaceutical drugs that "may cause suicidal thoughts or actions"? And having everyone report to the FBI and local police about how crazy they are?
Funny how you want to blame an inanimate object instead of the killer or the products that say right on the label they CAUSE people to kill.
We have 1.5 million gang members in the US, you want to disarm the law abiding and let the gang members keep their guns?
Get rid of Abortion and less people will die, get rid of Cars and less people will die, get rid of Knives and less people will die, get rid of Trains less people will die, get rid of people Crossing the Street less people will die, get rid of Motorcycles less people will die, get rid of Baseball Bats less people will die, get rid of all Medication less people will die from overdose, FBI reports in 2016 656 people were beaten to death with hands or feet, get rid of Hand and Feet less people will die.
You right it is simple, just ban anything that kills people and less people will die.
Hello :) how are you ?
It is important that people understand the tactics used by governments to get them to give up their own rights. Thank you!
Good article, sir.