It’s Time to Harden the Schools. No, Really – By Keira Butler (Mother Jones) / Apr 6 2023
Once again, we’re fetishizing children’s innocence at the expense of their actual safety.
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Last month, in the wake of the school shooting in Nashville that killed six people, Congressman Tim Burchett (R.-Tenn.) said in an interview that went viral, “If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, you’re wrong. They’re not going to fix this problem.” He added, “I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up.” The reaction to his pessimism was swift—for progressives, his statement was further evidence that Republican lawmakers would always find excuses not to enact stricter gun control laws.
But when I read Rep. Burchett’s comments, I wondered why the conversation ended there. Even if this elected official, in whose state the latest gun violence involving children had just occurred, had flatly confirmed that gun control was a nonstarter in Congress, was there literally nothing else he could do to save the lives of children and others in schools?
It’s tough to argue with the progressive case for gun control: As long as people have easy access to weapons, the shootings will not stop, so let’s fix the root problem by enacting stricter firearm laws. But while our legislators have spent decades repeating the same arguments about Second Amendment rights over and over and over again, gun violence now has become the leading cause of death for American children. Guns kill more children than car accidents, cancer, and accidental poisoning. Yes, clearly we must work to reduce the number of guns in our communities, but aren’t there other available options to stop the carnage at schools—not only from mass shootings but also from other, much more common, gun-related violence?
CONTINUE > https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/04/mass-shootings-schools-hardening/
