Starting from kindergarten, I’ve practiced cowering in the corner of classrooms with my classmates from gunmen. These active shooter drills were constant reminders that our schools could turn into shooting ranges, and us, lambs at slaughter. It was only when we heard “code green” or “drill cleared” boom from the loudspeakers that we could breathe easy again, our grim relief knowing it was a drill outweighing the terror of what could have been.
Now, lawmakers are rallying around more security checkpoints on campus. Even more so, Tennessee legislators passed a bill allowing armed teachers in schools while Senator Ted Cruz is proposing for schools to have a single point of entry, with armed law enforcement. Whether suggesting floor-to-ceiling bulletproof windows or automatically dead-bolting doors, elected leaders and other prominent figures such as National Rifle Association’s Vice President Wayne La Pierre all seem to be reading the same incessant buzzwords flashing from one autocue: just “harden” the schools.
While I recognize that these knee-jerk reactions to violence are pushes for more security, I am stunned that the concept of “hardening” schools is even a casual talking point. This to me seems like a defeatist admission that school shootings will inevitably occur and that there is nothing we can do except brace ourselves for the next bang.
It does not have to be this way.
School shootings are not unavoidable natural disasters. Take the United Kingdom for example. In 1996, after the Dunblane school shooting left 17 civilians dead, the British government banned all private ownership of semi-automatic weapons. 20,000 weapons were taken out of circulation in a government gun buy-back program. There have been no school shootings in the U.K. since Dunblane.
In Australia, after a gunman killed 35 people with a semi-automatic rifle in a 1996 massacre, 650,000 assault weapons were confiscated by the government and melted into slag. Lawmakers mandated licenses to prove the need for owning weapons in addition to enforcing more restrictions on the type of handguns that could be owned by civilians. The outcome? The rate of mass shootings in Australia has plummeted from one every 18 months to only one in the 28 years since. Germany has also tightened gun laws after a 2002 mass shooting. So did Norway in 2011 and New Zealand in 2019.
Only the U.S. has habitually absorbed its gun massacres by hardening everything but gun laws, and it pays the price in the carnage of 48,000 Americans killed in gun-related deaths each year, 3,600 of them children and teens.
For students like me, this means the dormant apprehension of gun violence is constantly triggered. How can students be expected to just continue their day while police officers line the hallways? How can students learn about civil rights with a clear mind in a school surrounded by guns? How can students study statistics in a classroom while spending half their time trying not to become one?
While I still cannot vote, as a member of Everytown for Gun Safety, I, along with hundreds of other students, have connected thousands of constituents in key districts with their legislators to lobby for the passing of common-sense gun laws. These proposed legislation include universal background checks and 30-day waiting periods for gun sales, measures already supported by a majority of Americans.
If lawmakers and politicians continue focusing on reforming school infrastructure rather than structure of America’s gun laws, will schools turn into impenetrable fortresses, places where students learn how to analyze hiding spots during active shooter drills instead of how to critically analyze history? Will my teachers, who are already underpaid and overworked, have to lecture with a marker in one hand and a gun in the other, ready to lock and load? Will my school receive a moat with live alligators someday?
It shouldn’t be like this for students to be safe.
