I was born 27 days before Columbine, one of the most devastating school shootings in modern American history. I remember first hearing about it in kindergarten when my teacher explained to the class why she had to lock the door and cover the windows each morning.
In seventh grade, I remember my teacher turning on the news, and my class watched the reports of the Sandy Hook school shooting. We sat and listened as the reporter listed off the names of 20 children who had been shot and killed.
Just last month, Stoneman Douglas lost 17 people because of a school shooting. It was at a high school similar to the one I went to last year.
This culture of school shootings, this culture of being gunned down for no reason, of having active shooter drills, of hiding underneath bulletproof desks, of purchasing bulletproof backpacks, of wondering, “would a shooter kill me if I pretended to play dead?” — it’s all I’ve ever known. It’s all that most of us have ever known.
It upsets me that this culture exists in a country like America, that our nation has come to accept “thoughts and prayers” as a valid response to mass shootings. It’s upsetting that the United States is one of the most advanced nations on earth, but we do not have sufficient, common sense, gun-safety laws, even in the face of repeated mass killings. If we look at the number of Americans killed by terrorism since 9/11, it’s less than 100. If we look at the number of Americans killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands. Not being able to resolve this issue is something for which America should be ashamed.
One thing that concerns me, in regard to the solutions to gun violence, is Trump’s suggestion for solving school shootings. He believes the best way to deter someone from shooting up a school is by arming “20% of teachers [so that they could] immediately fire back if a savage sicko came to a school with bad intentions.”
It’s hard to explain why this idea is so horrible and why this idea would inevitably lead to nothing but more devastation in schools. But let me try: first of all, in the United States, there are about 3.5 million elementary and secondary school teachers in public and private institutions. Arming 20% of these teachers would mean giving a Glock or some other type of firearm to around 700,000 people, creating an armed force half as large as America’s real armed forces on active duty. Teachers, without the intense and constant training that our military undergoes to possess firearms, are not qualified to be the front-of-the-line defense. (And considering that the American education system barely receives funding as it is, I don’t know how Trump expects this suggestion to be funded.)
Most other ideas suggested by Republicans and the Trump administration deflect the issue away from guns and attribute school shootings solely to mental health. It is so dangerous that Republicans are willing to shield themselves from the basic fact that guns are the reason behind mass killings, willing to do anything to keep dangerous firearms available to them.
I hate that a culture of loving guns exists in this country, and it disappoints me that America may not see meaningful gun reform any time soon.
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