protestors houston
© AP Photo/David J. PhillipDemonstrators gather in downtown Houston for a March for Our Lives protest for gun legislation and school safety Saturday, March 24, 2018.
A survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting is telling his classmates who support gun control to stop using the name of his sister to push their agenda.

Patrick Petty's sister Alaina was in the JROTC and would never have supported the gun control proposals that her classmates are eagerly pushing. Alaina was one of three JROTC students who died during the shooting.


Petty picked up a lot of support from those who think his wishes should be respected:





There was a time when politics didn't stoop this low - when kids and natural disasters and murders of innocents were not used to sell a political agenda or bash the political opposition.

Those days are gone. Partisans of all stripes are politicizing everything, largely because the media invites it. Conflict sells and if you couple conflict with tragedy, you've got a winning combination.

We may be wired wall to wall and coast to coast, but it's still just a vast wasteland of flickering images and manufactured pathos. Howard Beale was right:

This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! *WE* are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF...