American Congress and government are not protecting children

This essay was published in "The Conversation", an on line news digest. Although I appreciate the author's point of view, the fact is, our schools are less safe, while the American Congress and Donald Trump administration aren't doing anything to protect our children from preventable gun violence. Regardless of the sociological analysis about the growing number of gun violence incidents in schools, the root cause of all of them is the easy access to guns. 

Gun violence in America

Why security measures won’t stop school shootings

When deadly school shootings like the one that took place on Valentine’s Day in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Broward County, Florida occur, often they are followed by calls for more stringent security measures.

For instance, after the Jan. 23 case in which a 15-year-old student allegedly shot and killed two students and wounded 16 others at a small-town high school in Kentucky, some Kentucky lawmakers called for armed teachers and staff.

If anything, the response of the Kentucky lawmakers represents what has been called the “target-hardening” approach to school shootings. This approach attempts to fortify schools against gun violence through increased security measures. 

These security measures may include metal detectors, lock-down policies, “run, hide, fight” training and surveillance cameras.

While some of these measures seem sensible, overall there is little empirical evidence that such security measures decrease the likelihood of school shootings. Surveillance cameras were powerless to stop the carnage in Columbine (April 20, 1999) and school lock-down policies did not save the children at Sandy Hook Elementary (December 14, 2012) .

As researchers who have collaboratively written about school shootings, we believe what is missing from the discussion is the idea of an educational response. 

Current policy responses do not address the fundamental question of why so many mass shootings take place in schools? 

To answer this question, we need to get to the heart of how students experience school and the meaning that schools have in American life.

An educational response is important because the “target hardening” approach might actually make things worse by changing students’ experience of schools in ways that suggest violence rather than prevent it.

How security measures can backfire

Filling schools with metal detectors, surveillance cameras, police officers and gun-wielding teachers tells students that schools are scary, dangerous and violent places – places where violence is expected to occur.

The “target hardening” approach also has the potential to change how teachers, students and administrators see one another. 

How teachers understand the children and youth they teach has important educational consequences. Are students budding citizens or future workers? Are they plants to nourish or clay to mold?

One of the most common recommendations for schools, for example, is that they should be engaged in threat assessment. 

Checklists are sometimes suggested to school personnel to determine when students should be considered as having the potential for harm. While such practices have their place, as a society we should be aware that these practices change how teachers think of students: not as budding learners, but potential shooters; not with the potential to grow and flourish, but with the potential to enact lethal harm.

Of course, society can think of students in different ways at different times. But the more teachers think of students as threats to be assessed, the less educators will think of students as individuals to nourish and cultivate.

As researchers, we have read the accounts of dozens of different school shootings, and we think educators, parents and others should begin to raise the following questions about schools.

Questions of status

To what extent does the school – through things like athletics, homecoming royalties, or dances and so forth – encourage what some political scientists have called the “status tournament of adolescence” that lurks behind the stories of many school shootings?

As one reads about such shootings, one often senses a feeling of social anxiety and betrayal on the part of perpetrator. 

Americans hold high expectations for schools as places of friendship and romance, yet too often students find alienation, humiliation and isolation. The frustration at these thwarted expectations at least sometimes seems to turn toward the school itself.

Force and control issues

To what extent does the force and coercion employed by many schools contribute to a “might makes right” mentality and associated violence?

It is true that bullying is part of some of the stories of school shooters. Students who are bullied or who are bullies themselves will quite naturally think of schools as places appropriate for violence. There is also sometimes a rage, however, against the day-to-day imposition of school discipline and punishment. Since schools are experienced as places of force and control, for some students, they also come to be seen as appropriate places for violence.

Identity and expression

In research on American high schools, one finds the idea that American schools are intertwined with notions of “expressive individualism” – the idea that human beings should find out and be true to who they really are on the inside. Might this also contribute to school shootings?

Suburban high schools, in particular, are seen by the middle class as places to accomplish expressive projects. Sociologist Robert Bulman points out, for example, how Hollywood films set in suburban settings focus on student journeys of self-discovery, while urban school films focus on heroic teachers and academic achievement. 

In the same vein, many suburban school shooters see what they are doing as acts of self-expression.

Reading stories of school shootings, one often finds moments in which the shooters claim that something inside, whether hatred or frustration, needed to find expression. An example of this is the manifesto left by Luke Woodham, who shot two students in 1997. “I am not spoiled or lazy,” he wrote, “for murder is not weak or slow-witted, murder is gutsy and daring.” 

Tragically the school became the place where Woodham thought he could express the gutsy and daring person he found on the inside.

What to do

Of course, it will be difficult to definitively answer the questions we have posed above. And, even if we are able to find answers, it is not clear what the proper educational response should be.

For example, self-expression might be a valuable task for schools, even if it is found to contribute in some way to school shootings. Our suggestion is simply that, instead of trying to find solutions to school shootings in the dubious arms of security technologies, or even solely through more promising public policy, society should ask deeper questions about the nature of education and schooling in American society.

It is time to think about school shootings not as a problem of security, but also as a problem of education.

MaineWriter ~ Education is a sociological concept but easy access to guns is the root cause.

Duo of States - Colorado and Connecticut - Lead on Reasonable Gun Control Legislation

Connecticut plus Colorado are only one twenty-fifth of our nations United States. They are as different as the magnificent Rocky Mountains are from the beaches of Long Island Sound.  

Connecticut joined the nation in 1778, and was one of the original 13 colonies.  Their state's representatives William Samuel Johnson and Roger Sherman signed the US Constitution in 1787, where the Second Amendment, allowing Americans to own guns, was  important enough to be listed second among the inalienable rights provided for all citizens.  

Colorado became a state in 1876, nearly a century after Connecticut was born.  It is a beautiful state, but the first settlers endured the rugged terrain, living side by side with cliff dwelling Native Americans and opportunistic gold diggers.  

Colorado and Connecticut don't have much in common, except for the first letter of their state's names.

Except, the two share the devastating experience of being where three of the most horrific gun violence incidents recorded in our nation's history occurred.  

1.  April 30, 1999- Columbine Colorado: 12 students and one teacher murdered by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their massacre of innocent students sparked debate about gun control measures to protect against future incidents.  The shooting resulted in an increased emphasis on school security, and a moral panic aimed at goth culture, social outcasts, gun culture, the use of pharmaceutical anti-depressants by teenagers, teenage Internet use and violent video games.  

Nevertheless..... thousands of gun deaths later and on...

2.  July 20, 2012 - Aurora, Colorado:  A mass shooting by James Eagan Holmes in a crowded movie theater where 12 people were killed and 58 injured.  The lone suspect in this mass shooting has since exhibited suicidal behavior while in custody and has a history of receiving mental health counseling prior to the shooting spree.  

And then, following thousands more deaths by gun violence.....

3.  December 14, 2012 - Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut - Adam Lanza, 20, fatally shot and killed 20 students and six adult staff members in a mass slaying.

Make no mistake, all of the above deaths perpetrated by four evil intended mass murders were preventable deaths caused by gun violence.  Although the murderers pulled the triggers, the guns were the vehicles by which these deaths occurred   They were all preventable homicides. In the absence of guns and the ammunition needed to fire them, the victims of these shootings would likely be alive today because they were overwhelmingly young when they were murdered.  

Today, Colorado and Connecticut have led the nation by passing reasonable gun control legislation to offer innocent people some protection against future mass murders and gun violence.  Neither state created a utopia in passing gun control measures.  They also didn't take away Second Amendment rights from law abiding citizens.  But, the two states bravely did something to deter what has become a national epidemic of gun related deaths.

In spite of the National Rifle Association's control over right wing Republicans, who obsessively oppose gun control, two brave Democratic state governors defied the political risks associated with passing gun control measures to protect against future massacres.  Governor Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut has joined his colleague Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado to lead the nation in passing gun control measures to ban assault weapons, the deadly kind used to kill people in mass murders.  

Now it's time for the US Congress to follow the lead of these two very diverse states and their brave executive officers.  Our nation needs to stop the escalation of gun violence and, moveover, eliminate the blackmail of the NRA against politicians who dare to stand up for protections against mass murders who gain access to guns.  Shame on politicians who falls victim to NRA strong handed tactics, when these public servants are elected to protect the public from harm.  

It's time Americans vote all extremists out of office, but particularly the officials who put innocent citizens in harms way by putting the rights of mass murders to own guns above the public health of innocent people.