High school-aged students are becoming active in the debate about school safety, which includes the debate about gun control.
They have a lot to lose. Their lives, for instance.
Seventeen people were killed, including 14 high school students, in the most recent mass shooting at a U.S. school. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where the killings took place, have been vocal in the wake of the events at their school. They have pushed for gun control measures, including making it harder for someone like the 19-year-old charged in the violence to get the kind of weapon he used in the shootings. They have asked that more attention be paid to issues of mental health. But gun control measures must be part of the discussion, they say.
Perhaps the voices of teenagers will finally put some common sense into this divisive discussion. They’ve grown up with school shootings, being in elementary school when 20 children and six staff members were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
Students all over the nation are being affected by this violence. They’re tired of it. And they are the next generation of voters.
Tara Ganguly, a freshman at Bloomington High School North, told an H-T reporter last week that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting feels different from previous shootings. “I’m so scared now,” she said, noting that the shooting had been on her mind constantly in the days after it happened.
“That feeling is just creeping up from under you all the time,” said Melina Raglin, a junior at North.
School students today go through active shooter training monthly, just like generations before them became used to fire drills.
“It’s really awful that (schools) have to do it,” said North junior Jerrett Alexander. “But at least if it has to happen, (training) can limit the number of casualties.”
That’s something, but it’s not nearly enough. Katherine Posada spoke in Bloomington last week. She’s a graduate of the Indiana University School of Education and was teaching her English class at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when the gunman entered the school, pulled a fire alarm and started gunning down high schoolers and school staff members.
“Many of you are wondering if you will ever be prepared for a situation like a school shooting,” she told IU students she was addressing. “Obviously, I hope you never have to. I will say that yes, you can be logistically prepared. You will do the trainings and you will do the drills and talk to your students, and you will know exactly what to do in those situations.
“But I will tell you, you can never be emotionally prepared for what that’s like.”
One bad idea being offered up is to prepare teachers by arming them. There are so many things wrong with that idea it’s hard to know where to start. We’ll defer to Posada.
“Teachers being armed with guns is a terrible idea,” she said. “Teaching is about relationships and respect. If I am armed and have a weapon, my students no longer respect me; they fear my weapon and I become a potential threat to them. That is not conducive to teaching; that’s not what we do as educators.”
On the other hand, there is the need to study gun violence, something the NRA and their Republicans supporters in Congress have blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from doing since 1996. That’s outrageous.
Background checks should be strengthened, especially at gun shows at which individuals can sell firearms to other individuals without the same level of scrutiny required at gun shops.
There needs to be a reasoned discussion about the age at which young people can buy firearms, especially those like an AR-15 that can kill at a rapid rate.
High-capacity magazines should be restricted. Some states do that, limiting magazines to no more than 10 rounds. Some have no restrictions, allowing those with AR-15s and similar weapons to have magazines with 20, 25 or 30 rounds.
Teenagers, that next generation of voters, understand steps need to be taken to quell gun violence.
“People have the mindset that we’re not going to forget this one,” BHS South student Seth Thomas told the H-T.
“This one” resulted in 17 people shot dead in a school. Voters should send a message to politicians that they won’t forget it, either; that they want action to avoid the next one.