Only. In. America.

Posted on by under education, guns, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

I read this in The Guardian tonight with … sadness, horror, and rage …

Texas schoolchildren as young as four years old are being given Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon books, teaching them to “run, hide, fight” if a gunman enters their building.

Parents and teachers in the Dallas area have expressed alarm and concern that the Stay Safe book, produced by a law enforcement consulting firm in Houston, has been sent home in the backpacks of children in pre-kindergarten and elementary classes.

The book features the honey-loving bear created by AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard instructing kids about how to react to a mass shooting. It is not an official production, Winnie-the-Pooh has been in the public domain since 1 January 2022.

The subtitle to the Stay Safe book is: “If there is danger, let Winnie-the-Pooh and his Crew show you what to do: Run Hide Fight.”

Only. In. America.  The land of milk and honey?  The land of opportunity?  Hardly.  The land of guns and death.

Texas has some of the most lax gun laws in the US. In 2021, after mass shootings in El Paso and Odessa which killed 30 people, the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, enacted a law allowing Texans to carry concealed handguns in public without a license. 

But it isn’t only in Texas … it is the U.S. in its entirety.  We are not safe anywhere … not in school, not at the library, not in the supermarket, not in our workplace … not even walking to the mailbox. The U.S. has a lethal, rabidly-spreading virus … it’s called “ignorance.”  Rather than elect politicians who might actually govern, who might be willing to restrict guns in the interest of saving lives, we elect politicians who fight for more guns, who fight to take our human/civil rights away from us.  Why?  Because we truly do not understand … until it happens to one of our own.  Someday it will … and someday is closer than any of us think.

You can read the full article in The Guardian here.

58 thoughts on “Only. In. America.”

  2. Throughout the existence of nations, tribes, organizations, whatever, one of the great dangers is to embrace one strength and maximize it to the negligence of everything else. Precisely what the GOP has done/is doing with gun rights and the ‘right to bear arms’. They’re destroying themselves and the nation by maximizing reliance on this outdated ‘strength’ while larger problems grow. The result of their philosophy is that gun murders and mass killings increase while the US declines by almost every other measure.

    Too bad the founders didn’t flat out write in the Constitution back in the day, “Don’t kill children. Pass laws that prevent the killing of children. Killing bad. Not good for the country to kill each other. Bad for our businesses and economy, morale, image, and national security.’ Because a nation that promotes and protects killing its own citizens in encouraging a cancer to keep growing.

    Hugs n’ cheers

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    • Yes, it is too bad indeed that the framers of the Constitution couldn’t have had the foresight to see what a mucky mess we would make of the briefly-worded 2nd Amendment. It is one of the two things that will be the death of democracy in the U.S., the other being bigotry. Hugs ‘n cheers, my friend!

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  3. Winnie the Pooh used as a school shooting lockdown PSA wasn’t on my 2023 bingo card, and the fact that they’re using a beloved character from most of our childhoods in that situation is depressing. Heck, the Pooh movies and cartoons make the other Disney franchises look like Quentin Tarantino flicks for crying out loud for how non-violent they are! What does that say about our country how we even have to teach elementary school children to protect themselves from mass killers with lockdown drills and everything? Even I never had to deal with that when I was in my K-12 years, and Columbine happened when I was only in elementary school. Un-freaking-believable!

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    • I know, my friend. This book is a cop out, a sad replacement for actual laws that would save the lives of our children. It makes me so angry … I want to spit in the faces of these legislators who would rather do anything than give up their donations from the NRA, who think they are worth more than our children. Ahhhh … you are much younger than I thought, then! I was 48 when Columbine happened! And here we are, some 24 years later, and the situation has only gotten exponentially worse! I keep saying that the only thing that is going to accomplish anything is either a) we vote the bastards who are owned by the gun industry out of office, or b) it happens to one of their own children. Sigh.

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      • Absolutely and the book is such a cop out. Yeah, I remember how scary it was hearing about Columbine when it happened during my childhood which was the first school shooting I remember hearing about in my life. You would think that tragedy and the others happened after that would have smartened up people, but that hasn’t happened. We’re averaging a school shooting every week or two and that’s not even counting mass shootings in other public places. I agree with your observations about how there could be change. It gets concerning that other bloggers and friends I know from other countries ask me if I’m alright whenever they hear about these mass shootings even if they didn’t happen near where I live.

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        • Believe it or not, Columbine was the first school shooting I can recall ever hearing about, too! Which, of course, made it so horrifying! And here we are today … Parkland, Sandy Hook, Santa Fe, Uvalde … and so many more! Only the ones where multiple students die are even heard about … there are hundreds of school shootings where there were no deaths, or only one or two, that are never even reported on nationwide. Sigh.

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          • Oh, really? Wow. I think there was another one earlier that decade, but I didn’t know about it until after the fact. That was horrifying and same with the other ones after that. Nowadays, I see some mass shooting stories that get buried in the news if the body count isn’t high enough or (not to sound conspiratorial) doesn’t fit the narrative of mainstream news which is frustrating. I remember a British article about mass shootings years ago and there was a line that went “It’s just another day in America”. That line was so true and certainly more true in hindsight.

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            • The people in this country are becoming inured to it. Oh sure … they are all up in arms when one first happens, and it’s the headline news for 2-3 days, but then … POOF … it vanishes into thin air. Friends in the UK are appalled at the inaction of our Congress, and so am I, but as long as our Republican members of Congress can keep profiting from the gun industry, nothing is likely to change. And I say “Republican members of Congress” because if you check it out, very few Democrats take any donations from the gun industry, but Republicans do, sometimes into the millions over a decade or so.

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              • Absolutely. It’s like as a collective society, they become so powerless or numb. I understand when the UK or other countries call out America for the lack of action of school shootings (rightfully so). It’s so frustrating seeing the Congresspeople getting bought and paid for or having the thought that it should it can’t be stopped because God forbid any laws pass that could minimize mass shootings in general or that the people who commit them get hard time when certain people get killed for doing far less crimes assuming if they actually did them or not!

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                • Sigh. I remember a time when I had hope that our gun culture would change, but instead it just keeps getting worse. Soon, we will not want to go anywhere out of fear of gun-totin’ fools. But let’s keep paying our taxes to feed the fat idiots sitting in Congress, right? A good ol’ tax revolt is what this country needs on several fronts!

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                  • I hear that and I thought people would’ve wisened up when I was younger, but I guess I was naive in hindsight. It’s so fraught with tension and a severe lack of action where these politicians low-key support these school and mass shooters.

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  4. You can’t sell protection without a danger. It is easily observed that with a mere 8 billion humans that this is the time when humanity is facing its greatest danger. Whatever. Just don’t hide under the bed that’s where the boogeyman stays.

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    • A danger — real or imagined. I think maybe it’s time for another mass extinction … this time of those 8 billion+ humans! No, you’ll not find me hiding under the bed … I’ll be fighting to the end.

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  5. Jill, as the Pooh of my memory would say “Oh, bother.” I think a better use of the Pooh franchise would be on civilly resolving differences rather than picking up a gun. Keith

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    • The Pooh of your memory is the same as mine, my friend! Y’know … if Pooh were in charge of writing laws, there would be no guns. I thought this whole thing was a tacky cop-out and an insult to Winnie the Pooh and A.A. Milne.

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  6. First they try to shove the responsibility over to the teachers and plan to arm them, and now they are handing the responsibility over to 4 years old children? They should be ashamed all these vatpik politicians that make kowtow to the weapon industry. (Vatpik is Danish, I cannot write the English word here 😉 it has to do with the limpness of a certain part of the body.)

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    • Yes, and down in Texas, their solution is to post a copy of the Ten Commandments in every classroom! That failed, but they’ll keep trying to find solutions like that, solutions that aren’t solutions at all! Vatpik, eh? I think I’ve learned a new word that I’ll be using a lot!!! Thanks!

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  7. I read this post earlier this morning and had to put it away. This is very upsetting, Jill. Children should go to school to learn, have fun, connect. Not have to worry about a shooter coming to kill them. This is so incredibly backwards.

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    • We homeschooled my granddaughter … not because of school shootings, which were relatively unheard of at that time (1999), but because of her health issues. Now I’m glad we did! She has a better education than she would have gotten, knows how to think for herself and expresses herself well, and perhaps most importantly … she is still alive and unscathed!

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      • On another blog I am arguing the merits of universal vasectomies. I am getting a lot of pushback from many corners. But for what I am trying to accomplish, ending unwanted pregnancies, there are very vocal opponents. It seems it is the male right to reproduce is sacred, even if the women involved would prefer to be in charge of when they are ready to have children, etc.

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        • Oh, I can only imagine the pushback you’re getting! I’ve proposed the same or similar myself, and it’s as if I were suggesting we all swallow cyanide! The world is overpopulated as it is, but most people seem unaware, else uncaring about that. So, they keep on forcing women to be baby-making factories, while the man is able to walk away with naught more than a wave and a “See ya ’round, kiddo.” More and more I think the old “One Child” law in China made sense!

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  14. Pingback: Only. In. America. | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  15. And, if the children can only be, socialized by Winnie the Pooh, to teach them to duck and hide when another shooting happens in the classrooms of America, a gun-loving country, then, more children are expected to, D-I-E. This is, quite, passive, what the lawmakers are, doing (absolutely, NOTHING!), to, change or, improve the gun problems in, America!

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    • You’re right … and when the next school shooting happens and more children are murdered, they will say, “Well, we did what we could … we gave them a book that told them to run, hide, and fight.” As long as the gun industry owns certain members of Congress, we will not ever have substantive gun laws.

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  17. They are suggesting children ‘fight’?
    What did the authors and editors have in mind? The kids hide, then gather feral like to leap out in a savage horde to overwhelm the gun man, taking ‘acceptable casualties’
    Jeez Louise!

    (“Could be worse. Not sure how, but it could be.”
    —Eeyore)

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