Protecting the Children from NRA blood money.

When I had a newspaper job in a local community, I encountered a tragic story regarding a kindergarten student who unwittingly chased his art work beneath the tandem wheels of his school bus.

It was back in the time when a child hand carried their school work home.  A five-year-old was holding a construction paper picture colored with tempera paint flapping in the wind as he stepped off of the bus stairway at the stop near his house.  When the wind gusted and swept the picture away and under the bus, he chased got on his hands and knees to chase it down.

The bus driver started rolling as soon as the children who stepped off of the bus were out of the driver's sight.

That, and other tragedies where kids ran in front of a bus before it started rolling resulted in quickly defined laws to fund the purchase and installation of mirrors which provided an all around view of the bus from the driver's seat.

As a separate check, someone designed a bar which swept in front of the bus that would not allow the driver to proceed if it struck an object too close to the bumper for the driver to see below the vehicle's hood.

Oh, the speeches, from school board to city council to county commission to state legislature to the governor's office about how important it was to protect children from the insidious and irresponsible use of a school bus.

So, today, I hear on the radio about a shooting in a school in Connecticut.

Initial stories said the gun toter was dead and three people wounded; not a pleasant event for a school, but it sounded like the kids were safe.

But, as the hours ticked by, the news reported 100 shots in quick succession, and the death toll increased to the point where it made no sense, except perhaps to the troubled young man who perpetuated the act.

He was apparently troubled by learning disabilities, and for whatever reason, found at least two guns with a significant ammunition supply, and took them to the school to shoot his mother, five-year-olds, staff people at random.

I'll be curious to see if the 20 kids wiped out in their school will be valued as much as the children who were killed by school buses once the NRA and Walmart lobby to protect gun ownership.