Newspaper Page Text
SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2013
Communities must
unite in action to
prevent tragedies
By Dennis Valone
Georgia Tactical Officers Association
On Dec. 14, 2012 our country was changed
forever, as was my life as a husband, a father
anda police officer. The Sandy Hook
dent hit close to home for
me, as | have a grade
schoolerand my wife is a
teacher.
For several days after
the incident, I kept asking
myself, “When will dll
the political thetoric stop
about guns, security and
mental health, and the
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action begin”’ While all theses things have
an immediate feel good agenda, what steps
will be taken to actually stop or negate further
violence?
lti;timctostoguyingtofigmewt,
‘whom’ or ‘what’ is to blame, and time to
start addressing these incidents and preparing
for them as a community. Many of you may
read this and think, “That is not my responsi
bility. Leave it to the first responders and pol
iticians to solve!” But let’s really look at who
our first responders are. :
How about our school administrators,
teachers, janitors, and coaches? Why are we
not training them to be prepared to fight for
the children?
Many heroic stories came out of the Sandy
Hook situation for ‘those in the moment,’
such as school personnel trying to stop the
threat, or running through the hallways alert
ing all present of the threat. How many lives
could have been saved if those individuals
had been properly trained to respond to an
active threat? What if they were mentally and
physically empowered, through training, to
strategically fight violence with violence?
Most school systems have ‘somewhat” of a
plan in place for active threat situations.
Unfortunately, these plans are rarely tested in
training and are not constantly evaluated.
Depending on a locked classroom door, while
Supreme Court justices
need to take in a movie
By Doug Kendall and Tom Donnelly
Constitutional Accountability Center
Could a filin alter the course of Supreme
Court history? If the justices take a trip to
their local movie theaters to see “Lincoln,”
Steven Spielberg’s Golden Globe-nominated
film just might. Rather than focusing mainly
on the famous battles, famous generals, or
even the Civil War itself, Lincoln showcases
the hard-fought struggle over the 13th
Amendment and highlights some of the for
gofien leaders who led the ratification fight. It
is this focus on an essential — and essentially -
lost — part of our constitutional history that
makes Spielberg’s film so perfectly timed and
potdntially significant.
While “Lincoln” ends with its namesake’s
fragic demise; Reconstruction’s forgotten
hegoes — Thaddeus Stevens, Charles
Sumner and John Bingham, among others —
went on to add two more historic amend- .
ments to our Constitution, Amendments that
apply directly to each of the ciVil rights issues
facing the court this term. ;
As the court prepares to rule on marriage
equality, affirmative action and voting rights,
the justices should follow Spielberg’s lead
and honor our Reconstruction Founders and
the soaring guarantees that they enshrined in
our nation’s charter.
Let’s begin with the marriage equality
cases. In enacting the 14th Amendment, the’
Reconstruction Framers chose sweeping, uni
versal language: “No State shall ... deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.” I
n so doing, they rejected other proposed
language that would have limited the amend
ment to combating racial discrimination
alone, choosing instead to incorporate into
our Constitution the broad promise of the
Declaration of Independence that “all men
are created equal.”
Indeed, the 14th Amendment perfects the
Declaration by universalizing it — substitut
ing the word “persons” for Jefferson’s “men.”
As such, the amendment provides all persons
— whether black or white, woman or man,
gay or straight — with a constitutional sword
to combat invidious discrimination. That
guarantee is the constitutional foundation for
marriage equality.
Turning next to affirmative action, in Fisher
v. University of Texas, a white student is chal
lenging UT-Austin’s admissions policy, argu
ing that it violates the Equal Protection
Clause because it allows the university to take
race into account, as one factor among many,
in making admissions decisions.
However, the Reconstruction Framers —
those who wrote and helped to ratify the very
clause that the challengers rely upon in Fisher
— themselves enacted race-conscious mea
sures, including efforts to ensure equality of
hiding in the closet, may not be the best
option. If you look atsome of the survivors of
Sandy Hook, many of them ran away from
the school, ‘and were unharmed.
We as a society are afraid to really address
the problem for the sake of political correct
ness. We unfortunately live in a society that is
violent at times, and no matter how many gun
laws or mental health laws are created, these
types of events will not stop. We must learn to
fight back when, and if, necessary.
We must set long tefm goals on how to
deal with these tragic situations and not just
for public safety and school persannel, We
also need to train parents in what is expected
ofthemswhasafocpsm;gvmfion.by
learnifig what ‘cues’ to look for in children
and to whom they would report a potential
problem. .
What do we need parents to do if they
respond to an incident at their child’s school?
How about the media? Instead of rushing to
the scene with paper in hand and video cam
eras rolling in order to *‘get the scoop” why
don’t they help organize the incoming par
ents, or help comfort a child? Why does the
media insist on sensationalizing the incident
and the murderer? .
Do you remember when you were growing
up and all the parents in the neighborhood
looked after all of the kids on the block and
not just their own? We need to get back to
that mentality and take ownership of this
problem as a community! Let’s all stand
together regardless of race, ethnicity, genderh
or political beliefs and fight together to protect
our most precious resource ... . our children.
Forsyth County resident Dennis Valone is a lieu
tenant in uniform patrol for the Alpharetta Police
Department. He also serves as the president of
the Georgia Tactical Officers Association. He
has been in public safety for 18 years; six years
as a paramedic and 12 years as a law enforce
ment officer. Valone holds a bachelor’s in man
agement and is a graduate of the Northwestern
University School of Police Staff and Command.
His wife is a Forsyth County school teacher.
educational opportunity for African-
Americans. For instance, during the late
1860 s, the federal government provided land
and money for more than a dozen colleges
and universities that primarily served African-
American students. Therefore, the
Reconstruction generation, like UT-Austin,
recognized that in certain contexts race-con
scious measures were necessary to ensure
that equal opportunities were available to all.
Finally, tumning to voting rights, Shelby
County v. Holder involves a challenge to the
. preclearance requirement of the Voting -
- Rights Act —-a critical provision reauthe
rized by a near-unanimous Congress in 2006
~that requires states with a history of racial dis
crimination in veting to get “preclearance” by
the federal government of'any change in vot
ing. In Shelby County, the challengers argue
that this requirement is an affront to state sov
ereignty.
However, the 15th Amendment gave
Congress — not the courts, and certainly not
the states — authority to enact legislation |
necessary to end racial discrimination in state
elections. Indeed, the text of the Amendment
itself provides in sweeping terms that
“Congress shall have the power to enforce”
its provisions “by appropriate législation.”
When Congress acts to prevent racial dis- -
crimination in voting, such measures are enti
tled to great deference. .
“Lincoln,” by casting Spielberg’s unparal
leled movie-making magic on the fight over
the 13th Amendment, could be the beginning
of a profoundly necessary change in our
understanding of constitutional history.
Americans tend to treat our 1787 Founding
Fathers as demigods and their words as con
stitutional gospel. These Founders should be
revered for drafting the greatest govemning
charter in world history.
But it’s also true that they wrote slavery
into that charter, and it was left to our
Reconstruction Founders to write it out with
the 13th Amendment. More than that, with
the 14th Amendment, those same
Reconstruction Founders wrote the key pas
sage of Jefferson’s Declaration into our
Constitution and perfected it by making it
universal.
Finally, by ratifying the 15th Amendment,
they launched our most sustained project of
constitutional improvement: the series of
Amendments that expanded the franchise
and established the right to vote as the most
fundamental of all our constitutional guaran
tees. _
Doug Kendall is president and founder of
Constitutional Accountability Center, a think
tank, public interest law firm and action center
in Washington, where Tom Donnelly is counsel
and message director. Website: www.theus
constitution.org. :
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Gun control is not the answer
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| 7
JULIANNE BOLING
Columnist
knowing the rules was
essential to our handling a
sharp knife.
We had sword fights and
we had gun battles and we
had an occasion to fire a
weapon at a target. We
never aimed a gun at
another person nor did we
“horse around” with a
weapon of any kind. They
were as deadly and -
d.ang:tsus as any .
weapons, but we respected
their purpose and we
adhered to rules for them.
We seem to think that
because children are
playing pretend games
today that we have failed
to keep them from
dangerous situations. We
jump to the conclusions
that the fantasy games and
the shooting videos and
violence on television are
harming our kids, and
perhaps this occurs with
some. We dismiss the
aspect of parental ,
supervision and we ignore
the ratings given to
violence.
We played cowboys and
Indians as children. Our
fights were as real as any
child’s imagination could
make them. We had guns
made of sticks and bows
and arrows crafted from
whatever we could find.
It was a game that we
enjoyed and never once
did we think we were
actually killing or hurting
each other. I don’t recall a
single shot being fired
from thosg sticks ‘and no
arrow ever pierced our
skin.
This game was often
replaced with a series of
war games where we dug
fox holes, scrambled up
hills and ran rampart
through the woods trying
to escape or capture the
enemies:
Never once did we
injure or subdue the
enemy for the purpose of
dinning a game and we
often declared ourselves
winners of “hill taking” or
over-running an enemy
camp.
My father had three
guns and on occasion he
went deer hunting. He
never came home with a
deer head or a squirrel or
rabbit. He wasn’t a very
good shot I suppose. He
had a few knives and he
would allow us to use
them at times, but
QOO ‘ )
> JOHN L. MERRITT
]
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW |
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forsythnews.com | FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS |
1 find that I’'m not sure
of my opinion anymore. |
know that controlling guns
is not the answer since it
keeps the law abiding
citizens from owning
them. Gun control cannot
cure the mental handicaps
of people who massacre
others. It does put us all on
notice that the government
wants to limit our rights
under the constitution. Are
they going to ignore the
Constitution that gives us
the right to bear arms?
When all is said and
done, in our pursuit of
answers we might realize
our rights as citizens no
longer count. Religious
freedem has been
dismissed as unnecessary
and “In God We trust” has
been discarded.
The rights of individuals
are constantly dismantled
and the right to freedom of
speech carries with it .
abuse and official i
sanctions. ° |
Arewe ready for the
few men and women in
Congress to judge how to
dismantle the Constitution
for millions, or will we
speak up?
Cumming resident Julianne
Boling’s column appears
each Sunday.
WE
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