On probably the second day of class this year Xenia told me she needed ten minutes of video to take into her English class that would "get people talking." She asked me for suggestions. It's 58 minutes, not 10, but we came up with Innocents Betrayed. She said she could just select 10 minutes of the video to show. We watched it together and timed various segments. She decided just the first ten minutes would work. I wanted her to skip one of the genocides and show the part about the kids in California who were killed by a guy with a pitchfork in their home. All the kids knew how to shoot but couldn't get access to any of the guns because California state law requires "safe storage" to keep guns away from unsupervised kids. But it was Xenia's decision and she figured showing a few more million dead because of gun control would be sufficient to start people talking without getting into little kids with hundreds of stab wounds.
Her class should be over by now and I haven't got any calls from the school to pick her up so my guess is things couldn't have gone too badly for her. I'll update this posting later today when I get a full report from her.
Next on our list of projects is to take my picture from the fair and the KING 5 Boomershoot video to her chemistry teacher and suggest a field trip on "exothermic reactions". In an "isn't it a small world" twist her chemistry teacher's husband supplies the portable toilets each year for Boomershoot. Also, Barb and I graduated from Orofino High School with him.
Update 1: Xenia called a few minutes ago on another topic and I asked how the English class went. She said when she turned off the video it was silent for 30 seconds. They didn't know what to say. She didn't have much time and I'll get a further update after school. She seem pretty happy with the results though.
Update 2: Xenia reported most people didn't talk. The instructor didn't commit himself either way. Many of the kids didn't get the connection between lack of guns and genocide, "The government would have just done it anyway." One suggested that taking of the guns was as much a symbolic thing as much as anything, "Maybe because they didn't have guns they were more likely to feel helpless." Even if they weren't totally convinced at least they had some doubt put in their minds about the wisdom of gun control. Video can be a much more powerful media than the written word and JPFO did a great job on this video, although I do agree that the "gun-control enables genocide" could have been expressed better than just giving examples of when that happened. They should also of said that genocide has never happened without there being gun control in place. And more examples of where a relatively small number of private citizens with guns saved themselves (or at least significantly delayed their demise) from government sponsored murder would be welcomed.