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Witch Hunt Mentality Equals A Win For Registrants
Because of a hysteria driven, over-zealous mother, the New York State Senate recently passed legislation that prohibits placing school bus stops in front of the homes of registrants.
Some may call it a “win” for this witch-hunting mother and others like her.
I prefer to look at it as a “win” for the registrant.
Do any of us really want a school bus stop directly in front of our house?
Who wants that noise and ruckus outside your window at 7 A.M. and again at 3 P.M. five days a week?
This over-reactive mother apparently contacted the state senator’s office when she realized that her 6th grade daughter’s school bus stop was located next to the home of a Level 3 registered citizen. (The irony of this story is that the initial bus stop which the mother complained about was in front of a Level 2 registered citizen’s home, when the mother contacted the transportation department they immediately changed the location, which then happened to be next to a Level 3 registrant’s home.) Oh yes, we registrants are out there living amongst the rest of society and unless you are a hysterical fear monger who feels the need to look at the registry to know exactly where we live, you’d never even know we were there.
What had this mother so scared that she had to turn the placement of a bus stop into a 3 ring circus?
The original Oneida Dispatch article fails to mention anything about the offenses of the Level 2 & 3 registrants whose homes were at issue.
Were their offenses against children? Even if they were, these registrants had obviously been held accountable and were now free citizens (well, as free as registrants get I suppose), living in a home, minding their own business.
But apparently none of that was important. Just mention “registered citizens” and “children” in the same sentence and NY Senator’s get right to work doing what they feel they must do to keep children safe. (If only they were that quick to work on registrants issues.)
NY Senator David Valesky commented that “many children are at bus stops unsupervised for periods of time in the morning and the afternoon, and a school bus stop in front of the home of a registered citizen needlessly puts children at risk.”
OK Senator, where’s your evidence on this? When was the last time a kid was abducted while waiting at a bus stop, by a registrant? Facts sir, we’d like to see the facts you are basing your decision on.
I think if parents worry about their kids being “unsupervised” at bus stops, don’t leave them there “unsupervised”, stay with them until the bus comes, there are plenty of parents who do that.
Children waiting at school bus stops can be abducted by anyone passing by in a car, they can be innocently standing there and hit by drunk drivers who jumps the curb, they can be beaten and bullied by other children, they can get hit by stray bullets in drive-bys. A million bad things can happen to a child waiting at a school bus stop, a million things that have absolutely nothing to do with registered citizens or the homes they live in!
As witch-hunters do, this mother went on social media and worked people into a frenzy getting 1,700 of them to sign a petition to “make sure future bus stops are located in safe areas.”
Safe areas? Hmmm. In today’s world, where children are being shot inside public schools that these buses are transporting them to and mind you, not by registered citizens, but by their own peers, where exactly are these safe areas this mother thinks she has secured?
I understand this mom wants her child to be safe, all parents want that, but this mother is sadly mistaken when she says “As any parent would, I needed to ensure that my child would be safe each day.”
Nice idea mom, but there’s no “sure” thing, not today, not tomorrow, not any day.
Was there ever any actual “risk” to this woman’s child or any other child waiting at these bus stops before this woman stirred the pot of social panic?
Her misperception that her child was somehow being put at risk by waiting for a school bus in front of a registrant’s home, was unfortunately just her own imagination run amok. Since most of these type of offenses against children are perpetrated by someone they know, someone in their own home, this mother should be more concerned about those possibilities rather than about registrants she doesn’t know. Those who were minding their own business just trying to live peacefully in their own homes.
But let’s call this a “win” for those registrants who may just want to sleep-in some mornings and not have to listen to the mindless chatter and shenanigans of children waiting at a bus stop in front of their homes.
I sort of hope they put the bus stop in front of the mother’s house.
Article from Our own Scarlet Letter Echo. https://blog.womenagainstregistry.org/
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