THE STUDENTS ARE MARCHING – AT 12:40 P.M. ET:   Turn on your TV sets and you'll see joyous journalists covering today's student march against guns.  Determined little faces are pouring out of schools throughout the country, with some students even going to Washington.

Already, equally determined little faces in the admissions offices of some of our "leading" universities are assuring these worthies that, if they're disciplined for leaving school because of an unauthorized absence, it won't be held against them when they apply for admission.  Why follow rules when liberal politics are being pursued?

Once again we'll be told that we must, in order to be worthy of living, "believe the children."

One of the best lessons I learned in real journalism is always to be skeptical of children.  They're children.  Unformed.  Vastly inexperienced, and immature in an increasingly immature nation.  Student movements usually don't end well.  The student movement against the war in Vietnam was manipulated by far-left groups loyal to the North Vietnamese cause.  The North Vietnamese have openly admitted that.  Their "movement" contributed to the victory of a totalitarian regime, and the crushing of any hopes for democracy in South Vietnam.  But you may be sure that the "student movement" simply moved on to another cause.  People of Vietnam?  That's yesterday's march.  From Fox: 

Thousands of students walked out of classrooms nationwide Wednesday to protest gun violence and call for new gun control measures on the one-month anniversary of the Parkland school shooting that left 17 dead and sparked a grassroots wave of activism.

From Maine to Hawaii, students left school to demonstrate against gun violence in what could be the biggest display yet of the student activism that has emerged in response to last month's massacre at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In nearly 3,000 reported protests nationwide, students from the elementary to college level took up the call in a variety of ways. Some took part in roadside rallies to honor shooting victims and protest violence. Others held demonstrations in school gyms or on football fields. In Massachusetts and Georgia and Ohio, students went to the statehouse to lobby for new gun regulations.

The coordinated walkouts were loosely organized by Empower, the youth wing of the Women's March, which brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to Washington, D.C., last year. The group urged students to leave class at 10 a.m. local time for 17 minutes -- one minute for each victim in the Florida shooting -- and suggested demands for lawmakers, including an assault weapons ban and mandatory background checks for all gun sales.

COMMENT:  Gun violence is a serious subject.  I'd like to see it taken seriously by the marchers.  Some of the proposals, like increased background checks, are reasonable, but I doubt if a single life will be saved by today's march.  This is a subject that requires real study, with real statistics, and common-sense answers.

And the first answer has little to do with gun control.  It has to do with making sure that schools have at least the same level of security as jewelry stores.  Mass shootings at schools succeed when there is no defense for students.  We would not think of having a school without fire alarms and fire drills.  Yet we leave schools undefended, even declaring some of them "gun free zones," an open invitation to a shooter.

A serious approach to gun violence would begin with an understanding that the object of public service is to serve the public, not to feel good about ourselves or go on marches.  The real work here, as always, will be done by mature adults who devise workable solutions that actually have an effect. 

It will also take brave reporting by disciplined journalists who have the capacity to report something other than the cries of a mob, even a well-meaning mob of kids.

March 14,  2018