A Gringo in Rural Mexico: One of many sensible voices from the front lines

Monday, 26 February 2018

One of many sensible voices from the front lines

Guest Editorial

by Don Bendell

How We CAN End School Shootings for Good

After the recent school shootings in Florida and immediate attacks on guns, AR-15s, and so-called “assault weapons,” I decided to research, without political agenda, to see if people like me have been wrong. After all, I am a lifetime NRA member, and was a US Army officer, and Second Amendment advocate.

According to a heavily-researched list of children killed in school shootings since the 1700s, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States, I found the pattern that I was curious about. I also strengthened my belief with further research including another Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-Free_School_Zones_Act_of_1990, and a lot of pouring through other writings.

I also got some of my information from over a half century of being involved in the martial arts, primarily teaching and owning martial arts schools. With over a half century of experience, I hold grandmaster ranking in five martial arts, including 10^th degree black belts in both jujitsu and judo, 7^th degree black belts in tae kwon do and freestyle karate, and am a black sash instructor in Muay Thai kickboxing.

During the 18th century there was 1 incident of a school shooting.

During the 19th century there were 28 shootings.

In the 20^th century there were 227 shootings.

So far in the 21^st century, including the February 14, 2018 shooting, there have been 207 shootings.

Looking at the numbers in the primary article, I found that in the 1990 time frame of school shootings, the figure almost doubled, a drastic increase. I asked myself, “What did we do differently that caused that jump?”

The answer was easily discovered: The Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) is an act of the U.S. Congress which was introduced in the U.S. Senate in

October, 1990 by then-Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. It forbids the possession of any type of firearms within 1,000 feet of any type of school, be it public, private, or parochial. Hence, the signs you see prominently displayed around all schools now reading, “This is a Gun Free, Drug Free Zone.”

In teaching women and girls sexual assault prevention, I would tell them it is illegal to steal a purse from the front seat of an unattended convertible with the

top down. However, we must use common sense. Just because it is illegal to steal the purse, does not mean you should leave a purse sitting on the front seat of a convertible while you go work out in the gym at a shopping mall. That is insane, and so are the signs around schools. The Gun Free Zone signs become welcome mats for cowards, sociopaths, and miscreants. Less danger for the wimp to carry out his shooting rampage without getting shot himself.

There were will never be a successful home invasion or strong-arm robbery at my ranch, not because sheriff’s deputies will arrive in ten or twenty minutes,

but because the aggressors will die a very violent death before law enforcement can even get there. Bad guys know that, so they look for easier targets.

In teaching martial arts over the years, I noticed a distinct change in harried, too-busy adults from parenting, even dysfunctional parenting, which at least

gave children a sense of belonging, to what I call “prescription parenting.” I had patients referred to me by a well-known and highly-respected southern

Colorado pediatrician Dr. Helen M. Danahey, because I was strict, but fair, demanding but not mean.

I specialized in children with autism and ADHD because they needed healthier boundaries, not pampering. I cannot tell you how many parents brought kids in to our schools and had self-diagnosed their child with ADHD, although I would immediately see that their eyes did not dart around the room when talking to them, a sure sign of the affliction. I concluded most were simply spoiled brats, but many parents searched until they found doctors who would agree with their Google-inspired diagnoses and put the poor kids on medications. Hence, I got to teach weeble-sized zombies often-times.

The other thing I noticed while teaching was the high preponderance of children playing video games constantly, and many were games glorifying violence for the sake of sensation, not for patriotic or noble reasons. The bloodier they would make the games with laser guns, rockets, bombs, and machine guns the more kids would buy them.

I grew up emulating cowboy stars carrying six shooters, or John Wayne-type combat heroes, who would shoot and kill villains, but for heroic, patriotic, or moral reasons.

For years, I have watched the desensitization of our children with video games, or as I call it, “electronic heroin.” They wantonly shoot and kill bloody victims for no other reason than to achieve a higher score. When those with character defects move from the video game to the real world, their reward is to get greater media coverage than the previous shooters.

Feeling unloved, not listened to, or unfulfilled because a frequently-absent parent indulges them to make the parent feel less guilty, they strive for the negative attention of the world press and network television, who are only too eager to oblige. After-all, controversy creates cash, and ratings brings more into their coffers.

AR does not stand for “Assault Rifle,” a term created by anti-gun advocates. It stands for Armalite Rifle.Those zealots frequently say, “Who needs an assault weapon for hunting?”

Nobody does! They are for sport shooting, collectors, and home and family protection. In World War II, Emperor Hirohito of Japan was going to attack the United States along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington, but his generals and admirals stopped him, led by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto,

Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy who cautioning said,, “There will be an American with a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

The framers of the Second Amendment were not trying to allow for the progression of hunting rifles’ capabilities. Very far-sighted and wise, they wanted to protect the US citizenry from both foreign invasion and power-mad scoundrels in our own halls of government. That is why we must have semi-automatic rifles with large magazine capacities.

When I was a boy in the fifties, I bought, by mail-order, a BB machine gun which fired BBs rapid fire while I turned a crank like a Gatling gun, and even in the mid-thirties you could buy an air-cooled .30 caliber machine gun by mail order, and it was delivered to your house by the postal service, no matter what your age. Automatic weapons were outlawed in 1980, but even back then, there were ZERO mass school shootings.

Do you really want to end mass school shootings? The answers are simple:

1. The news media needs to self-police and stop giving people who kill innocents news coverage. Tell about a shooting, do not name or show the shooter, or over-report the incident. Also, stop politicizing mass murders.

2. If you brought children into this world or adopted any, stop having karate instructors, school teachers, dance teachers, andvideo - games raise your children. Listen to your kids, don’t just bark orders, don’t spoil them because you feel guilty over getting divorced, do things with them. Get involved. If they are not getting your attention, being kids, they will end up getting attention elsewhere negatively.

3. If, God forbid, your family member is killed by a drunk driver, hold the driver responsible, not the car or car-maker. Most people are smart enough to realize this, but want to blame guns when some idiot kills people. 53 year old, Mikhail Popkov, Russian serial killer was a former cop and owned guns, but raped and murdered at least 82 women killing them with knives mainly.

4. Enforce gun laws already in effect, and government officials, actually oversee agencies like the FBI who ignored numerous warnings about the recent mass murderer Cruz in Florida. Investigate when you get such leads.

5. Congress, repeal the well-meaning but very inept Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) of 1990.

6. Our world has changed. Law Enforcement Officers with guns protect courthouses, congress, the White House, government buildings, but not public schools. Are judges, politicians, and federal and state bureaucrats more precious and important to us than our children? In lieu of the massive overhaul and cost of manning schools with armed security, start a volunteer organization of former well-screened, well-trained veterans and law enforcement officers with concealed carry permits to take turns providing security in all our schools against possible mass-shootings. Hospitals, etc. LOVE volunteers. Volunteers love volunteering!

7. Politicians: STOP IMMEDIATELY turning one group of Americans against another group so you can get votes and political contributions. Start acting like statesmen, not snake-oil salesmen.

No matter how much we close our eyes, smile hopefully, and click our heels together, this problem will not get solved by magic. The perfume of accomplishment is not found in television ads, but in the smell of perspiration and elbow grease from hard work.

My conclusion: The only good gun control is being able to place six rounds in a two-inch bullseye at one hundred yards.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Don Bendell, is a best-selling author with over 3,000,000 copies of his 29 books in print and a Pulitzer prize nomination in 2011, a 100% disabled Green Beret Vietnam veteran, and a 1995 inductee into the International Karate and Kickboxing Hall of Fame, Don is studying for his PhD in Communications at Regent University, has a Masters Degree in Business Leadership from Grand Canyon University, and has 6 grown children and 11 grand-children He and his psychologist wife, Dr. Janet Bendell, own the Strongheart Ranch south of Florence, Colorado named for one of his best-selling westerns.

Click to visit our little Adobe Hideaway…

This is our rustic, but very comfortable place, out in the rural area to the northwest of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas…the State's Capital. From a bustling city of 400,000, we placed our domicile a bit more than 20 miles into the scenes of mountains, citrus groves, spring-fed creeks and rivers with crystal clear waters, and an abundance of bird species that make veteran birders shake their heads in wonder.

We are all but adjacent to the venerable Hacienda de Santa Engracia (about 500 yards away), which dates to the 1720s and has ancient structures still in use, very elegant, and mystical in many ways. It has operated as a guest hotel since the 1970s.

Our little place rests on three and a fraction acres, fronting on the Rio Corona, which is lined with over-1,000 year old cypress trees. The nearby Sierra del Cautivo…a major segment of the overall Sierra Madre Oriental that dominate most of eastern Mexico, lies to the west by about three miles. guards the many springs that maintain the almost perpetual flow from those heights (up to 12,000 fasl) while our place is situated right at 1,000 feet above sea level.

Give us a call, come by and visit…it is truly a different venture in the most positive sense. We can be reached by our email - privatouring@gmail.com - which is our preferred method of communicating.

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What is an OROG?

Once a person lands on our page, that individual becomes a member of the Order of Readers of the Old Gringo, (OROG). There are no dues or assessments to pay, no meetings, no requirements. We are not associated with the KKK, the WCTU, the French Masons, or the Global Warming Glacier

Protection Committee.

We do have a distant connection with the Knights of the Golden Circle and hold the maps to the internment sites of 34 tonnes of Confederate Gold, and 1,000 tonnes of Mexican Imperial Silver (bar and coinage) derived from the collapse of the Reign of Maximillian von Hapsburg, Emperor of Mexico (1863 - 1867). I think we can remember where we put it.

All kidding aside, we are acerbic, but we do not bite. We do believe in our antiquated philosophy, but we try to not impose our quirks and beliefs so far as to be disrespectful.

El Gringo Viejo

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Wise Words

Communism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

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Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is.

I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!

David Crockett

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And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Clause, and he and Mrs. Clause and their helpers care greatly for the good children of the Planet. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generosity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way so as to provoke humankind to goodness.

El Gringo Viejo

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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

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It is impossible to make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.

Abraham Lincoln

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El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. My grandfather is buried in the Weslaco Municipal Cemetery about 10 feet away from his friend, Ed Couch.

After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding warhorses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s. He did not speak much about his service, but we determined that he apparently made rank of 1st Lieutenant.

El Gringo Viejo's Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas. Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton Birchard, Jr. who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman Francis, who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser. He served as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas during the late 1960s and early 1970s and as Senator John G. Tower's immediate Executive Assistant. The Senator is the Godfather of Norman's first son.

Norman died at age 77 in Austin, Texas and I was one of four eulogists who was chosen to speak at his en memoriam at the Austin Club in downtown most Austin…within sight of the State Capitol.

It was a personal duty and very rewarding

in every way.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606. I

attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again.
El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years.
Another batch of folks, mainly Anglo, settled in the middle Hudson Valley. There was another group of Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s.

My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another Captain Asa Grant, 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action, including David Limbaugh, Lieutenant, 42 Tennessee Infantry. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives. They honed their military readiness under the supervision of Gen. von Steuben and someone named Washington at some place called Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

A grandson of his, Isaac, settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain the Union. Oddly enough, both my mother (a Southerner) and my father (a true Yankee by blood) believed that we would have remained closer if we had separated, and each side gone the ways of their own yearning, but amicably.

The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. We have some record that this Christian who married the Webster had actually lived in the colonies, but travelled several times back and forth between the Spirits businesses in England and Ireland and the New World. They wound up as the generations progressed in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) & Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States.

The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1578, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain entered into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos and Cerralvo (Nuevo Leon), in Palofox (Texas), and Revilla (Tamaulipas) on the Rio Bravo.
Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of mainly Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near and southeast of San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period.

My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. By my side they are 16th generation English Colonial - American and 6th generation Texian. By my wife's side, my children are 23rd generation northernmost New Spain, Texian, and American. Isolating Texas alone, my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.

LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds en chorus, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Well maintained Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years,cooking. Not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff...and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.

DISLIKES?
Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he/she was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions. (There are some exceptions.)

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice as costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc.
Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.