Astroturf

Today there was the various marches across the country for the "March for Our Lives."This is so completely manufactured -- in fact it's stated as such from the FAQ at their site.

Each sibling march is an independent student-led initiative. Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords Courage, among others, will be assisting in the coordination of sibling marches around the country. More information regarding sibling marches can be found here.

My issue with this is that with all of these proposals for preventing gun violence, almost all of the funding is coming from Everytown for Gun Safety. Of course almost all of Everytown's funding is coming from Michael Bloomberg.Ever since the Occupy Wallstreet movement, Mr. Bloomberg has tried to make sure that normal people are stripped of their ability to protect themselves. This is concurrent to him, and people like him, being surrounded by armed guards all of the time.Ok, so are school shootings a problem? Well, of course they are, I'm not going to pretend that their not a problem. But are we in a position where we've gotten so bad compared to the past?No. No we haven't.The number of school shootings have been trending downward ever since the early 90s.Even looking at broader crime statistics, the amount of violent crime has been trending downward since the 90s. All the while we as a population are being driven the media to be in a constant state of fear. Why? Also keep in mind that the assault weapons ban did nothing to move the needle of gun violence in any measurable way; this law was on the books for 10 years and did nothing to curtail crimes.Based on the evidence, I am only left to conclude that this is basically nothing more than indoctrination of our kids from the billionaires out there.The exact same trend can be seen on the donations to pass I-594 in Washington. The NRA spent some money, around $25,000 to oppose it, while Bloomberg spent $3,259,266 in support of it's passage. Additionally, if you look at the rest of the donors you're greeted by a who's who of billionaires, both local and national.Then, when you have schools teaching why certain ideas are wrong, based on donations from these billionaires, you can come to basically no other conclusion. Seattle, for instance, noted that a walkout for this would be excused. Would Seattle act the same way for a pro-life/anti-abortion march? Of course not.If you look at the flip side of guns, the number of times that guns are used in a defensive fashion is around 2,500,000 times per year. Not every time a gun is used in a defensive manner is the trigger pulled, but the presence of a gun prevents another crime from being committed. Ok, so you don't buy the two-and-a-half-million number, sure, let's pretend that it's ten times less. Even at a quarter million, it's around 10-fold the number of firearm homicides a year. Do you just want to create ten times (or a hundred times based on the numbers) more real victims out there because you're scared of the manufactured boogie-man?Before you blindly join a cause, take a look to see what organizations are funding it and what their goals may be.Before you call for more laws to be passed, make sure you're aware of the laws presently on the books and ask your representatives why they're not being enforced. Then consider that if our existing laws aren't enforced, what would yet another law do to change anything?