Protect our students and teachers

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child determined children have human rights and governments are obligated to protect them. But our leaders have chosen to protect those who want a gun, any gun, all guns, over the rights, needs, and safety of our children. Seventy-three nations, (not the US), have endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration which helps countries where attacks on schools have been frequent. Perhaps we should seek their assistance.

The Secret Service, last September, reported they were running out of money, and the capital police are asking for $426.6 million to better protect legislators. Why don't our leaders protect themselves - if it's good enough for children and teachers, why not them?

Second Amendment? What about: secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? What is 'posterity” after all - guns, or our children and our future as a people? It's true laws alone will not stop violent attacks, but violence against children should be countered in every way possible. Ending isolationism, racism, and inequality are part of the solution.

Francis Cress Welsing wrote: 'Children are the only future of any people. If the children's lives are squandered, and if the children … are not fully developed at whatever cost and sacrifice, the people will have consigned themselves to certain death.”

Jeanine Redlinger

Riverside