{"id":8727,"date":"2006-10-11T14:10:14","date_gmt":"2006-10-11T18:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8727.html"},"modified":"2006-10-11T14:10:14","modified_gmt":"2006-10-11T18:10:14","slug":"whatever-you-do-dont-mention-the-word-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/whatever-you-do-dont-mention-the-word-gun\/","title":{"rendered":"Whatever you do, don’t mention the word ‘gun’"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a series of horrific school shootings in recent weeks, the White House decided to host a panel discussion<\/a> in Maryland on school safety. Victims and their families spoke, the president listened, the Attorney General was on hand to discuss some law-enforcement efforts, and most of the discussion appeared intentionally driven towards promoting some kind of “character” education agenda<\/a>. In other words, it was about what you’d expect from the event.<\/p>\n

The amusing part, in a sad kind of way, was the one word<\/a> that no one was supposed to utter.<\/p>\n

President Bush has always been a disciplined man, but yesterday he set a new standard for self-control: He moderated an hour-long discussion about the rash of school shootings in the past week without once mentioning the word “guns.”<\/p>\n

First lady Laura Bush was nearly as good, giving a seven-minute speech at yesterday’s White House Conference on School Safety without mentioning guns. Two longtime aides, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, deftly led hours of panels at the National 4-H building in Chevy Chase with only a few glancing references to weapons.<\/p>\n

This was no misfire. The White House, hastily arranging yesterday’s forum to react to shootings over the past fortnight at schools in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin and Missouri, neglected to invite any gun-control advocates. In fact, how the killers had carried out their deeds might have remained a mystery if 19-year-old twin brothers Theo and Niko Milonopoulos hadn’t infiltrated the gathering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, those Milonopoulos brothers appeared to be real rabble-rousers. Theo pointed out that “the common denominator in the rash of school shootings” has been access to high-powered guns. He asked what could be done to reduce the spread of such weapons “in light of the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban?”<\/p>\n

No one wanted to take the question. Eventually Gonzales piped up, saying the nation didn’t need any new gun laws.<\/p>\n

And that was that. After a series of school shootings<\/i>, government officials and community leaders got together for an hour-long chat without even casually addressing the weapon behind all of the violence. It’s a bit like talking about rebuilding New Orleans without mentioning the hurricane.<\/p>\n

Given the skill with which the Bush gang puts politics above policy, it was almost impressive.
\n<\/p>\n

The Bush administration has for years been known for its use of human props to make its points: middle-class “tax families” to pitch for tax cuts, victims of Saddam Hussein’s torture to pitch for the Iraq war, and friendly partisans to pitch soft questions at “Ask President Bush” sessions. The technique is not new; Bill Clinton did much the same when hosting events about race.<\/p>\n

Still, yesterday’s forum was unusual. While experts dispute how much blame to place on children’s access to guns, even the invited guests found it a bit odd to banish the topic entirely from a school-violence forum. “No one wants to touch gun control before an election,” surmised one participant, Warlene Gary of the National PTA.<\/p>\n

Democrats and gun-control advocates shut out of the invitation-only event had to do their sniping from a distance. They pointed out the COPS in Schools program, given $160 million in 2000, has been cut to zero. “The Bush administration is in denial,” protested the Violence Policy Center.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For what it’s worth, the “g-word” wasn’t the only verboten subject yesterday. When another panelist brought up “computer predators” who pray on school kids, the president had to change the subject. Quickly.<\/p>\n

Given recent events, Bush just wasn’t willing to go there<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a series of horrific school shootings in recent weeks, the White House decided to host a panel discussion in Maryland on school safety. Victims and their families spoke, the president listened, the Attorney General was on hand to discuss some law-enforcement efforts, and most of the discussion appeared intentionally driven towards promoting some kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}