Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'

Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'

CNN Staff

Updated 0214 GMT (1014 HKT) February 18, 2018

The above link contains the full speech by Emma Gonzalez:  After viewing this in its entirety, I can understand why she would feel that way.  It tugs on the heart strings, no doubt - a teenager gets up in front of a live audience to tell her side of the story. 

You can feel her pain, her fear, her grief.  Here are her words:

Since he was in middle school, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter. Those talking about how we should have not ostracised him? You didn’t know this kid, OK? We did.

She was pretty determined to get her point across: it is pretty obvious that I didn't know this kid.

Some people have said that 'Okay, she admitted to bullying' though the truth is he was ostracised, not bullied.  I agree pretty much with Stephen Crowder up to a point, okay, ostracising the nerdy kids is not very nice (though the author was a lass by the name of Courtney Kirchoff, not Mr Crowder himself).  But was the article itself entirely right?  Here is what the College Conservative had to say:

Just consider this example. I don’t think that Ms. Kirchoff, who wrote the original article for Louder with Crowder, was being malicious. She saw the video in the tweet, which was in turn shared from another source, who in turn clipped it from a much longer video. The original bad actor here was the person who decided to clip the video out of context of the bigger speech. Kirchoff likely just reacted to it and wrote the article, thinking it was representative of the whole speech.

But the operative word is ostracised, not bullied (though ostracism can be conflated with bullying, because sometimes the two aren't mutually exclusive). 

And maybe if he wasn't so badly ostracised (and if he deserved to be ostracised), things may have been different.  But then again, maybe not.  Again, The College Conservative also argues that:

The honest truth is that we don’t know if Cruz could have been stopped by his fellow students befriending him. He’d been fantasizing and planning things for months prior to the shooting. What we DO know is that there were serious institutional failures on the parts of adults. Teachers and administrators, the Broward County Sherriff’s department (both during and before the shooting), and the FBI all failed to take action when they had clear indicators that Cruz was a problem.

In other words, it was the powers that be that really let down those children - those very people who really were in a position to stop  Nikolas Cruz, didn't.  And that is what I have a problem with.

Some people think I had an axe to grind with those teenagers, because yes, while I agree that they are obviously grief-stricken individuals (particularly Ms Gonzalez), and that they have the right to speak their minds; I also agree with The National Review that she, and David Hogg (the main mouthpiece for 'gun control') should not be immune from criticism.  Firstly, his 'expertise' in dealing with the matter.

Or could it be, perhaps, that Hogg has become a liability and that his champions now regret having thrust him into the limelight? One certainly couldn’t blame them if they did, for Hogg is in fact a pretty poor advocate. And why, pray, would he be otherwise? Suffering through a terrible crime gives a person no special insight into its causes, and Hogg has no special insight into its causes — or, frankly, into anything else. He’s ignorant about basic civics; he’s liable to backward reasoning; and, unable as he is to synthesize the evolving talking points upon which he relies, he has increasingly come across as slippery. In perhaps his most embarrassing moment thus far, he shifted from arguing that the cop on duty who stood outside and did nothing while his classmates were slaughtered was correct to demur (not a great message, all told) to making the opposite case when he sensed an opportunity to lay the blame at the feet of Governor Scott — who, of course, had nothing to do with running the sheriff’s department responsible for failing to save his classmates. Demosthenes he is not.

And secondly, here is what they had to say about his call to boycott certain products associated with the NRA (National Rifle Association).

Even worse has been Hogg’s attitude toward those who have had the temerity to disagree with him. Here, one suspects, he has been let down by those around him, the loudest of whom have evidently led him to believe that our complex political discourse can be circumvented by the blunt issuing of demands. The gun debate in America remains intractable, consisting not only of difficult legislative questions, but of elaborate constitutional, sociopolitical, historical, and criminal inquiries, too. For some reason, David Hogg has come to suppose that he can slice through this reality by issuing threats: Give me what I want, or I’ll stop using FedEx; give me what I want, or I won’t go back to school; give me what I want, or Florida’s economy gets it. And, by the way, I’m going to outlive you…

Even if that is true that he might outlive the 'grownups' - it just reeks of smugness.  And that, in my opinion, makes him a 'smart arse' - insisting upon boycotting particular product.  If that is not a compelling reason for disliking him, then I don't know what is.

Maybe, if he lives long enough to 'grow up' and mature, he may one day find himself in a position where he might just need a gun, or might change his views on gun control.  Who knows?  But in the meantime, he needs to learn not to throw his weight around, and listen to (and learn from) those who have been on this planet a good deal longer than what he has.

cheers,
Night Owl