When It Comes To School Shootings, Stop The Bickering And Solve The Problem.
by Rep. Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D. The Chamber of the Florida House of Representatives is a very austere place. Upon entering, you feel the weight of your constituents urging you to work for the betterment of all Floridians. Despite its loftiness, during session, it is also a place bustling with activity as members scope out other members' positions on issues and chairmen are approached regarding the possibility of having a bill heard. But on Wednesday, February 14, 2018, all of that came to a halt as the announcement was made that a terrible mass shooting incident was taking place at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, and a moment of silence was called in solidarity with those who were tragically affected by the day's events. The work of the Florida House continued after that, but at a much more somber pace. As we know, seventeen people paid the ultimate price for this senseless act of violence while countless others were left with a huge void in their lives and in their hearts. And those of us in the Florida House were left with a renewed call to do something to address this tragic problem. The question, of course, is what? The easy but fruitless answer is to reach for gun control legislation. All sorts of ideas have been floated ranging from a ban on assault weapons all the way to confiscation. The problem with these suggestions is that no matter how many of these laws are passed, the nefarious shooter will continue to obtain weapons and wreak havoc on the frail and unarmed. Although many are frustrated by the Congress's inability to enact stricter gun control legislation, the ineffectiveness and futility of these measures is the very reason for the gridlock. Unquestionably, if gun control measures truly worked, their passage would be unstoppable. So, absent these ineffective measures, what else can be done? Well, there are actually some very promising solutions. For starters, school districts can enact programs designating individuals with familiarity in handling weapons (such as concealed weapon permit holders, military veterans, former law enforcement officers, etc.) to carry them in schools for the purposes of protecting students in case of an active shooter or hostage situation. These programs may include training requirements, background checks, and psychological testing in order to qualify to carry in a school. These individuals ought to be carrying in a concealed manner so that no student or stranger would know the identity or number of such designated carriers. Many states prohibit the carrying of any weapons in all schools, public or private, thus rendering the members of churches with schools on church grounds powerless to respond in the case of an active shooter incident. Those restrictions need be lifted, particularly during times when the church's school is not in session, such as Sundays, the same time that services are being held. States ought to enact legislation requiring school districts to develop policies and response plans to active shooter situations, and drill them, so that all involved know how to respond. Simulation programs, such as the one run by the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine where field enactments are created requiring coordinated responses by local SWAT, EMS teams, and assigned weapons carriers. This will allow for better coordination amongst the different players needing to work together and for the identification of challenges before they are encountered in live events. Like in other areas, prevention is the best policy and overreliance on the federal system is a prescription for failure. Consequently, state law enforcement must be tasked with the job of identifying high-risk individuals and with investigating them before a mass casualty event takes place. It follow that state legislatures must pass laws and appropriations providing these agencies the tools they need to hunt down these would be killers and get them the interventions they need. So why haven't these very reasonable and logical steps been enacted? In my experience, the number one reason legislation in this arena meets so much resistance is because of the conflations and misguidance provided by its opponents. Without fail, whenever these measures are presented, opponents turn the debate into a discussion about the expansion of guns in schools or the intrusion on gun free zones when, in fact, these measures represent no such expansions or intrusions. Additionally, fear mongering inevitably takes place as if the fear of the unknown were greater than the acknowledgment of the certainty of another deadly occurrence. Clearly, our country's problem with violent behavior and murderous conduct is much greater than the mere existence of guns, and we should never have a discussion about gun violence and school safety without noting the need to improve the moral ills afflicting us. More importantly, we cannot allow the paralysis that grips us regarding gun control to keep us from enacting useful and lifesaving measures. Doing so not only represents a terrible negligence on our part, but it will also lead to more tragic and needless loss of life. Dr. Julio Gonzalez is an orthopaedic surgeon and lawyer living in Venice, Florida. He is the author of The Federalist Pages and cohost of Right Talk America With Julio and Rod. Dr. Gonzalez is presently serving in the Florida House of Representatives. He can be reached through www.thefederalistpages.com to arrange a lecture or book signing.
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Never Mind Trump, Depose Obama.
by Rep. Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D. In an unusual development shedding further doubt on the motives and dealings of the Obama Administration, Senator Chuck Grassley released a partially redacted email written by Susan Rice, and sent to herself, documenting a meeting with President Obama where he allegedly stressed "his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect" of the investigation regarding Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election is handled "'by the book.'" The mere fact that that Ms. Rice would write an email to herself makes the communication unusual, but there is so much more that raises questions. First, the letter was sent on January 20, 2017, at 12:15:32 PM, from, and to, an official government email address. Of course, this is the date of the new President's inauguration marking the peaceful transfer of power from the Obama Administration to the Trump team. Although the date of the letter is indeed striking, even more surprising is the time, as it was sent after President Trump had been sworn into office at approximately 11:47 AM. By 12:15, the time the email was sent, both President Obama and his White House team, inclusive of Rice, was out of office. Why would Susan Rice be sending an email containing classified information and detailing certain aspects of a meeting with the Immediate Past President of the United States using an official government email less than 30 minutes after the new President had been sworn in when she was no longer National Security Adviser? And does the act of handling classified information less than an hour after the expiration of her term in office make Susan Rice criminally liable? Equally as intriguing, Rice is actually not the only recipient to her self-sent email as she copied one of her staffers, a young man named Curtis Ried, who according to his very scant twitter feed worked for Ambassador Rice for seven years. Why cc Curtis Ried? Did he have a need to know about this meeting? Was the email solicited by Ried? Did someone else ask Rice to send it, and if so, who? This brings us to the substance of the January 5th meeting documented in the email. Why would the President of the United States, in the last fortnight of his tenure need to remind the FBI Director, the Deputy Attorney General, the Vice President, and the National Security Advisor, in a meeting, to carry out an investigation regarding suspected Russian hacking "by the book"? Adding to the incongruity is Rice's problems with her candor and her lack of credibility. Recall, this is the same Susan Rice that The Washington Times' David Keene called the Obama Administration's "go-to liar" largely because of her multiple attempts to sell a fake story to the American people linking the attack on our embassy in Benghazi to a ridiculous and inconsequential movie. She is also the same Susan Rice who called Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl a hero. One must consider that Rice's email represents another messaging mission given to her by President Obama. Admittedly, the public is not in possession of sufficient information to answer the myriad of questions posed by Rice's actions. But here's what it does know. Along with the texts sent by Lisa Paige to her FBI lover and coworker, Peter Strzok, there are now at least two known references regarding the possible direct involvement of President Obama in the covert and illegal investigations of American citizens with the intent to dig up dirt on his party's political opponent, more than enough to ask questions about the President's potential direct role in this latest example of the federal government's abuse of power. Unquestionably, the planks on the bridge leading to Hillary Clinton and her involvement in the FISA affair and with Russian activity designed to influence the outcome of an American presidential election are multiplying and becoming sturdier with every week that passes, while the ones leading to Donald Trump are rapidly crumbling. But there also appears to be a new extension emanating from the Hillary Bridge, one leading to Former President Obama himself, and one that was just made stronger by the hapless and unwitting actions of the dishonest and often bumbling Former National Security Adviser, Susan Rice. Dr. Julio Gonzalez is an orthopaedic surgeon and lawyer living in Venice, Florida. He is the author of The Federalist Pages and serves in the Florida House of Representatives. He can be reached through www.thefederalistpages.com to arrange a lecture or book signing. The Death Of The Obama Wing Of The Democratic Party.
by Rep. Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D. The past few weeks have been devastating for the Democratic Party, its reputation, and its standing among the American people. As a result of an endless stream of news reports and congressional actions, the American people have learned that the Democratic Party, in collusion with Hillary Clinton and Russian operatives, fabricated a dossier as a guarantee to keep an American citizen from being elected President of the United States. They learned that the FBI and the Department of Justice, while under the leadership of President Obama, promoted those fabricated misrepresentations while simultaneously protecting Mrs. Clinton from prosecution of her gross violations of federal secrecy laws in her mishandling of classified electronic information. And as the milieu of corruption and malfeasance revealed itself, no evidence of the collusion Democrats claimed to have taken place between Russian operatives and the Trump Campaign appeared. On the contrary, the deeper Congress peeled into the issue, the more it appeared that the Democrats were colluding with the Russians to defeat Trump rather than the obverse. On another front, Democrats worked to oppose a tax cut that would place millions of dollars back into the pockets of average Americans and their businesses. More offensively they recurrently minimized the importance of those newly found cash savings. Even as the Democrats foolishly decried the effects of the tax package as inconsequential, or painful to America's middle class, the nation's largest employers announced bonuses and increases in entry level wages. In response, Democrats took to the airwaves and social media, decrying the magnitude of those bonuses as "crumbs," while the middle class they so adamantly claimed to defend considered those crumbs hugely significant. The Democrats did not have to take such contrarian positions on any of these issues. In so doing, however, they positioned themselves as defenders of the Deep State and of its corruption. Worse yet for the Democrats, they showed themselves to be the very elitist ultra-rich against whom they claim to be advocating. The fact is that the positions recently taken by Democrats are the result of a faction that has taken control of the Party's direction and has steered it well away from the views of mainstream America; the Obama Wing of the Democrat Party. And what we are witnessing with every misguided Democratic argument, every attempt at stopping corruption because of its own protectionism, and every demeaning slight at the intelligence of the American people is the slow, protracted, and howling death cries of that Obama Wing. The Obama Wing of the Democratic Party is a decidedly anti-American faction that has conflated its calls for workers' rights and social mobility with a rabid anti-capitalistic position that disparages self reliance. It is a Wing claiming that nothing you can do is achievable on your own, ("It takes a village."), but rather is facilitated and made possible only by the presence of government. It is a faction that effortlessly moves beyond the constraints of the law to suit its own self-propagation, doing so for two reasons. First because the law ought not apply to them since they know what's best for the rest of us, and second, because, above all, it is important that they protect themselves against attacks from their political enemies. You say these views are antithetical to the United States Constitution and to those foundational principles giving rise to the most exceptional nation in the history of earth? Why, yes! But since when are those documents and principles more important than the self-righteousness of the positions espoused by Obama Democrats? From this attitude, we get a President who believes it is within his authority to decide when the Senate is or is not in session just so he can make a recess appointment. We get a President who shamelessly says that if Congress doesn't solve a particular policy problem he will even though the Constitution never gave the President of the United States the authority to pass this nation's laws. And we get a faction believing it is okay for the federal government to force people to purchase a product, even if they don't believe they need it. So far, the Obama Wing of the Democratic Party merely sounds like a typical liberal faction. But there's more! This faction believes the United States is the source of great evils in the world rather than its most hopeful solution. In its Orwellian stance, it believes there is such a thing as leading from behind, and that such a thing ought not to be construed as cowardice. And it believes it is okay to abandon America's allies in an attempt to appease its most rabid enemies. It is also a faction believing that every social strife ought to be properly seen through the lens of blacks versus white. There can be no justice, says the Obama Wing of the Democratic Party, unless "white people" are struck down at the expense of "people of color," concepts irreconcilably antithetical to human rights and civil justice. Strangely, ever since the rise of the Obama Wing of the Democratic Party, the rank and file Democrat has felt it necessary to defend these espoused concepts. Instead of acknowledging the misguided and inherently hateful positions of this terrible epoch in American politics, they instead continue to defend it, hastening their descent into the quicksand of their amorality. There is only one outcome for this wing and the path it has charted. But as long as the Democrats continue to defend it, we will continue to see its demise as a party of influence in the United States. Oh yes, it may make some progress in a midterm election here and there, and it will continue to make noise. But overall, its sphere of influence will continue to shrink, and its voice will become increasingly shrill. The only question is, how painful and protracted will this stubborn and egoistic demise be. Maybe we can ask Congressman Gutierrez. Dr. Julio Gonzalez is an orthopaedic surgeon and lawyer living in Venice, Florida. He is the author of The Federalist Pages and serves in the Florida House of Representatives. He can be reached through www.thefederalistpages.com to arrange a lecture or book signing. |
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Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D.Dr. Gonzalez is an orthopedic surgeon and lawyer who served as State Representative for South Sarasota County in Florida for four years. He is the author of Heathcare Reform: The Truth, The Federalist Pages, and The Case for Free Market Healthcare. Archives
April 2019
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