Guns

I grew up in West Texas where it was not unusual to see a pickup truck with a gun rack behind the driver. My dad had a rifle, though I never fired it. For a while, I was in ROTC and fired, dismantled, and cleaned a rifle. But I have never been a great fan of guns. Never had a desire to hunt for food or trophies. In college, I did take a semester of archery. Although I was not particularly good at it, I can understand the pleasure of aiming for and hitting a target.

The mass shootings at schools have heightened sensitivity to the issue of gun regulation. But the greatest number of school shootings are not mass attacks; most are the results of an individual seeking revenge against a specific person or select group. These shootings take place quickly because the shooter knows where to find the target and is only interested in attacking that person. There is not time for intervention in too many cases and the presence of an armed guard is often no deterrent.  For most school shootings, by the end the shooter has entered the school, there is nothing that can be done to prevent the attack.

But what if there were more armed guards? Wouldn’t that keep shooters away or at least provide immediate reaction?  Here’s what the evidence shows. Four of the five worst attacks (Santa Ana High School, Columbine, Marshall County High, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas) had security guards or resource officers. It is true that a young teen in South Carolina decided not to shoot up his middle school a couple of years ago due to the presence of security. But he then went to his old elementary school to carry out his shooting.

If we are going to reduce or eliminate school shootings, more guns is not the answer. You don’t have to think about it very deeply to understand how disastrous it would be to put guns into the hands of non-professionals (school staff, teachers) with the expectation that they would halt a shooter.

If we are going to reduce or eliminate school shootings, we will have to reshape attitudes that imagine violence can solve conflict. For that matter, that violence can solve anything. Claiming that mental health is at the core of school shootings ignores the evidence. The problem is moral health. The games we play, the movies we soak in, the politicians we endorse, our attitudes towards other drivers, the way that we treat our children: all these have a huge impact on attitudes towards violence as a solution.

Culture change is a vast challenge, and the immediate (and sometimes eventual) response is to declare it too big a problem. But laziness may be the biggest hindrance. I know that I could volunteer to be a mentor. I could be more involved in helping homeless families. I could help build houses with Habitat for Humanity. I have done all these before. The crisis of moral health grows; I must again be a warrior in that battle.