Friday, September 6, 2019

A New Jersey School Superintendent’s Anti-Educational Lesson–Only One Side to the School Shooting ‘Discussion’

A group of Montclair, New Jersey high school students painted a public mural on an underpass wall that depicts six students with their hands up, in black and white paint, with targets on three of the students’ backs, accompanied by the phrase “NEVER AGAIN” in bold red letters. (You can view the images in the article.) The mural created some controversy, including a response from the president of the Montclair Republican Club. As Brianna Kudisch (NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) reported:

The outspoken parents and residents are not the only ones with a strong reaction to the mural. Montclair Local reported the local republican club is considering creating an opposing mural.

The president of the Montclair Republican Club said the group wants to create an alternative view to the current mural, one that promotes the second amendment of the Constitution.

John Van Wagner emphasized that everyone abhors gun violence and said the tragedies have impacted everyone, but the mural is promoting one political opinion and one side of the spectrum. [sic]

In response, the following letter appeared in the NJ Star-Ledger on 9/2/19. [The Star-Ledger stopped posting its letters online, where people can comment. So I’m posting it here in its entirety for the purpose of my commentary]:

There is no alternative to this gun message

I could not believe the response of John Van Wagner, the president of the Montclair Republican Club to the gun violence mural painted by high school students in that town (“Gun violence mural is target of criticism,” Aug. 30). The message of the mural is simple and nonpolitical: “Never again” should children be massacred in their school.

Van Wagner feels he has the right to present the alternative point of view. What would that be — that it is going to happen again? That the Second Amendment is more important than the children who are being killed in our schools?

Our children are demanding that the adults in their lives and in this country find a solution to this unique American problem. [sic]

John J. Marciante Jr. Superintendent, Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District

My emphasis. I can hardly believe that a man in Marciante’s position of authority over a school district could make a statement like that. Like many a teenage child, Marciante is saying he knows enough, that no one else’s views count, and therefore no debate is necessary because there is nothing more to learn. This is irresponsible coming from someone in charge of a single classroom, let alone an entire school district. 

For better or worse, the Second Amendment figures prominently in many “solutions” proposed for the spate of school, in the form of an attack on the right of gun ownership by decent law-abiding people. Rightly or wrongly, Van Wagner obviously sees in the mural the implication that Marciante states explicitly; the idea that the Second Amendment is responsible for the school shootings, and that to support the Second Amendment is to support school shootings. The mural can certainly be construed as “simple and nonpolitical.” Marciante’s second paragraph is also simple, but blatantly political.

Does Marciante even know the source of the right to keep and bear arms? The right of gun ownership derives from the right of self-defense, which derives from each individual’s inalienable right to life. A right is a guarantee to freedom of action, so long as one’s actions don’t violate the same rights of others. Therefore, the right of self-defense necessarily includes the right to possess the means of defense. But the Second Amendment does not sanction the “right” to shoot others in cold blood. There is no conflict between the right of self-defense and the right of students to be safe in their schools.  

Yet that conflict is essentially what Marciante is asserting, and what Van Wagner is apparently responding to. The implication in Marciante’s assertion that the Second Amendment conflicts with the safety of school children is a threat not only to the right of gun ownership but in principle to every fundamental individual right. Any right, including the First Amendment rights to freedom of religion, conscience, speech, press, petition, and assembly, and the right to property protected by the 4th and 14th Amendments, can all be abused in a way that threatens or harms others. Do we also face a choice between the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments and our safety and security? The fate of our rights should not be determined by the few who step beyond the moral boundaries implicit in those rights.

According to May Li, one of the mural’s student creators, “the controversy was expected and partly the reason behind the mural. ‘We wanted to start the conversation,’ she said. ‘We wanted it to create discussion and be thought-provoking.’” Unless, according to Marciante, you happen to support the Second Amendment. Ironically, Marciante’s own words are self-refuting: As he plainly demonstrates, the school shooting issue is political, and defenders of the Second Amendment certainly belong in the conversation that the students are trying to spark. One wonders who the real adult is. 

I tend to agree with another letter-writer, Mark Surks, whose Letter was published in the Star-Ledger on 9/3/19. Although also critical of Van Wagner, Surks wrote:

It never would have occurred to me that a mural of students depicted as targets is somehow the political opposite of the rights of gun ownership and entitled to ‘equal time’ on the part of NJ Transit. 

True enough. Few people would view calls for an end to slander or libel as the political opposite of the rights of free speech and press. Unfortunately, attacks on the Second Amendment figure prominently in the conversation surrounding school shootings. Given this fact and Marciante’s obvious hostility to the rights of gun ownership, Van Wagner’s position hardly seems unreasonable. I’m not sure that the Montclair Republican Club should be given the other side of the underpass for their own mural. Yet, apparently, the thoughts of Van Wagner have no place in the discussion, according to Marciante; some lesson for the students of the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District from their own superintendent.

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1 comment:

Mike Kevitt said...

Unreason has a just voice in the public forum outside formal legislative forums, along with anything else. But, in formal legislative forums, where legislation is made to be signed by the executive, unreason has no just nor legitimate voice. It must be filtered out and away by gate keeping. Such may never be discussed by nor even introduced into such forums. This prohibition violates nobody's free speech. The subject of all legislation must always be reason and individual rights, and nothing else.