Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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4 UCW FEBRUARY 28-MARCH 6, 2018 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM PUBLISHER'S PEN STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman Bill@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/ EDITOR Stephanie Crider editor@upandcomingweekly.com OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Paulette Naylor accounting@upandcomingweekly.com ASSISTANT EDITOR Leslie Pyo leslie@upandcomingweekly.com SENIOR REPORTER Jeff Thompson news@upandcomingweekly.com SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR Earl Vaughan Jr. GRAPHIC DESIGNER Elizabeth Long art@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS D.G. Martin, Pitt Dickey, Margaret Dickson, John Hood, Jim Jones, Shanessa Fenner, Jason Brady, Lauren Vanderveen, Matthew Skipper, Shane Wilson SALES ADMINISTRATOR/ DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Laurel Handforth laurel@upandcomingweekly.com MARKETING/SALES Linda McAlister Brown linda@upandcomingweekly.com ––––––––––– Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan St. P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: (910) 484-6200 FAX: (910) 484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a "Quality of Life" publication with local features, news and information on what's happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly wel- comes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publication consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per person. ©2018 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. Cover art/Various ads with art graphics designed with various elements from: vecteezy.com and freepik.com. As communities grapple with another school shooting this month, citizens are rallying to demand change. Will more laws make a difference? This week, publisher Bill Bowman yields this space to retired Special Forces soldier Jim Jones. Jones shares his thoughts on ways communi- ties can protect citizens and citizens can protect themselves. Eighteen minutes of terror was all the time it took for the murderer to kill 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Feb. 14. The people, politicians and media are crying for an end to school shootings. This article is not just about guns or mental health. This is about you and your community. While there is no 100 percent solution, there are things we can all do to turn the tide. We should ask local politicians to make our schools safer. We can do this by mak- ing doors more secure, building schools with access controls built in, planning escape routes and conducting training. Schools should have a strong police pres- ence. Take a dog through the schools and tell the students it is a drug- and gun- sniffing dog. It can be any dog, but the idea is that you are doing something. We should learn from the fire preven- tion efforts that go into our schools. Schools are built to satisfy fire code standards and are inspected, and schools regularly conduct fire drills. The last mass school deaths (10 or more) from fire was in 1958 in Cheektowaga, New York, where 15 students died. Demand respect for teachers in the classroom. Ideally, teachers should never have to defend against an attack, but they have a traditional role of keeping good order and discipline in schools. Because we have taken corporal punishment out of school, the children often rule the teachers. In the classroom, teachers should be trained to protect their rooms. The doors should have strong locks, and the teach- ers should have the ability to quickly and effortlessly barricade the doors. The rooms should have windows that allow students to escape. Teachers should be taught how to use items in their class- room as weapons – just in case they have no other choice but to fight. A fire extin- guisher can be brutal to the face and eyes. Schools need to have experts train staff and administrators so they know what to do during an active shooter event. Most school systems want teachers to lock down the school. A few years back, a friend who was responsible for writing a school's emergency procedures asked me about this. We discussed escape routes, but the school board's law yers objected because of liability concerns and fear of lawsuits. This is insane. Would we tell teachers to keep children in a burning school? What if the Columbine attackers were able to detonate their firebombs, propane tanks and the other 99 explosive devices that were found after they com- mitted suicide? Yes, people could be shot while running out of a building, but it is hard to hit a moving target, and distance is your friend when it comes to beating the odds. The police must stay current on tactics. Police need to have subject matter experts at each school who can advise other of- ficers when they arrive at the scene. High school students should not be forced to go to school. Some of the most successful people in the country did not finish high school. If school is not for them, they should be given the right to pursue happiness in some other way. However, if a student is permanently ex- pelled from school for an act of violence, a restraining order should come along with it. It should also be entered into the gun background database and used as a rea- son to refuse the sale of a weapon. After a reasonable time has passed, the record should be cleared again unless there is another reason to bar that person from purchasing a gun. No one wants to talk about the effects of violent video games on our children. As video games have become more realistic, it has become hard to tell the difference between the game and reality. Video games effectively train players to kill as many people as possible. Parents and the gaming industry will argue that this is not so. But look at our military. Pilots spend countless hours in f lying simulators before taking off. Twenty-year-old NASCAR driver William Byron (#24) credits playing racing video games for his success as a NASCAR driver because the games are realistic. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are the big three in video technology and have major lob- bying groups. Violent videos are a huge market share for these companies. In 2017, the top five videos were all violent. You shouldn't need the government to tell your kid that violent video games are unhealthy. Just walk into their rooms and take them away. We should improve our justice system to provide a fair and speedy trial. Florida has the death penalty. There is no rea- son why it should take more than a few months to bring a person to trial if they are caught committing a crime on video, if they confess or if DNA evidence shows they are guilty. If found guilty and the death penalty is the judgment, it should only take a day or so to have that person put to death and let people move on with their lives. Not so helpless by JIM JONES Video games effectively train players to kill as many people as possible. Image comes from Sniper Elite 4, a third-person tactical shooter stealth video game developed by Rebellion Developments. JIM JONES, Contributing Writer. Comments? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910- 484-6200.