I grew up going to school in Littleton, Colorado. By the time I finished my high school education, I had witnessed two deadly shootings at schools only a few miles from my own. Columbine High School, the site of the 1999 school shooting that killed 13, was a 10-minute drive away. I am all too familiar with what it’s like to grow up in fear.
But my experience is a mere drop in the bucket of the trauma that is caused by attending school in the United States. As evidenced by the 231 school shootings that occurred since 1999, I am lucky to be alive.
On May 24, Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas became home to the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, just behind Sandy Hook Elementary. The victims of the Sandy Hook shooting would have been in high school by now, and we’ve commemorated their deaths by allowing the exact same tragedy to happen again and again.
Nineteen children and two schoolteachers are dead. As sickening and heartbreaking as the headlines and stories are, the likelihood of anything changing in an effort to protect children going forward is laughably low.
Every time a massacre like the one in Uvalde occurs, we promise ourselves that this is the one that finally pushed us over the edge—that something like this can never happen again. But time dulls the initial shock and pain from hearing about the slaughter of children, and legislatures on both sides of the aisle readily move on, only to resurface and regurgitate talking points again after the next school shooting.
There are an incalculable number of arguments from all sides about how to solve this public health crisis. At this point, however, after watching these events occur one after another for the past 20 years, it is baffling that even the smallest of preventative measures have still not been implemented.
Background checks are required by federal law to purchase a firearm from a licensed gun dealer. These background checks are not required, however, for online or private purchases, purchases that universal background checks aim to cover. Seventy percent of Republicans and ninety-two percent of Democrats support requiring universal background checks in order to purchase a firearm, yet there are 20 states that do not require them.
Moreover, Texas Gov. Greg Abbot signed legislation that allows permit-less carry in Sept. 2021. It is absolutely mind-boggling that in Texas one has to go through more screening and more paperwork to receive a driver’s license than to buy a firearm.
There is of course the argument that criminals will still find a way to get a gun even if they are restricted. Applying that same logic, we should get rid of all practice and testing—written, driving and vision—requirements to obtain a driver’s license. In fact, we should get rid of the requirement to have a driver’s license altogether. People without a license can still get behind the wheel of a car, so what’s the point?
I recognize that most types of reform will not solve the problem completely, but if it could save even one child’s life, that is enough of a reason to at least try.
Texas gun laws allow 18-year-olds to buy a long gun or a rifle, including an AR-15. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde shooter purchased two AR-style rifles at a local federal firearms licensee, one of which he used at Robb Elementary.
In a statement regarding the Uvalde shooting, Abbott said that any sort of gun laws are not the solution and that the state should instead focus on improving school security and mental health resources.
Nearly every time a school shooting occurs, Republicans call for increased school security and mental health resources and Democrats call for gun control. While a combination of both plans would likely reduce the number of school shootings, neither solution, let alone both, ever actually gets put into play. Members of Congress have proven time and again that they’d rather continue to watch children die than cross the aisle.
Are we supposed to accept that children must risk their lives for an education?
Passing gun legislation and upping school security—both appropriate ways to tackle this issue—are merely empty promises that politicians use in moments of crisis. These solutions are simply material to argue over with their opposing political party.
Despite being an industrialized and so-called “civilized” nation, children in the United States continue to be shot dead at school with no end in sight. The generation that grew up reading headline after headline about yet another school shooting is now having children of their own; children who will likely live in the same fear their parents did.
