Opinion
DeVos’s stance on guns in schools is indefensible
By Makayla Franks ’19
January 26, 2017
Tags opinion
Donald Trump’s cabinet is soon to be filled with people united in supporting the President and his policies. On paper, this is exactly what a cabinet should do. They are there to educate the President and help him to make decisions for the better of the country. However, when those cabinet members are out of touch with what actually needs to be done in the country, there can be serious repercussions for the American people as a whole. One nominee in particular, Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, has shown a startling lack of care or awareness around the issue of guns in schools.
I was in high school when the Sandy Hook shooting occurred. I had just moved from Connecticut to Baltimore, and I was still trying to figure out how to handle switching schools, moving from town to city, and easing back into making friends again. Part of our school day was to have a Morning Meeting right before lunch. In that time, teachers and students gave announcements for different kinds of events, senior speeches and, occasionally, news updates outside of local Baltimore news.
That morning, I didn’t pay attention to the news on the TV before heading out the door for school. So to have our Head of School stand up at the podium and tell a room full of high schoolers that 26 people—20 of them between the ages of six and seven— had lost their lives to gun violence, completely blindsided me.
In general, the room was full of shock, anger and despair. For someone who grew up only an hour from Newtown, CT, I felt even more gutted. I remember standing outside the auditorium after the meeting was over, not realizing that I had started crying until my grade-level dean gently pulled me into a hug, and asked if I needed to go to the school counselor.
I said no, and proceeded with my day. In Pre-Calc, I learned that my teacher had been a student at Virginia Tech in 2007 when a gunman attacked the campus. We had also heard about Columbine in ’99, the “Texas Tower Sniper” in ’66, and were well aware of the fact that we’d had multiple shelter-in-place drills because of someone armed in the vicinity of the school.
Guns have no place in our schools. They have no place near innocent children. The fact that this seems to be a point of contention that should be “left up to the states” is utterly ridiculous. That DeVos’s main defense point in favor of having guns in schools is the threat of grizzly bears is even more absurd.
Since Sandy Hook, there have been 186 additional shootings on school campuses in the U.S . For some reason, we place emphasis not on protecting the lives of our children and teachers, but on supporting a right that was made in colonial America during wartime. It is not 1776 anymore. It hasn’t been for quite some time. Not to mention, the guns back then pale in comparison to the high-capacity weapons available today. We have automatic handguns that load in less than a minute and meet their mark with incredible accuracy. The same cannot be said for Revolutionary muskets. The Second Amendment is outdated, and needs to be updated to reflect the current state of this nation’s arms capabilities and to better protect its citizens.
If I were the one running the country, all the guns would be taken away, with no exceptions. If you want them back, you’d be subjected to incredibly detailed background checks and a lengthy application process. But I’m not the one running the country, and I know that that plan is highly unrealistic.
As is, the least that can be done (and here I do mean the absolute least) is to continue to ban guns from school grounds, purely on principle. From there, we should allow individual schools (note: not districts, but individual schools) to apply for exception to the law. Have them state why, what type of weapons they wish to store, and where those weapons will be located within the school. And even then, only allow weapons in a few select instances.
There is a company, Bullet Blocker, that creates bullet-proof backpacks, jackets, tablet cases, and notebooks, for students to take with them to school, just in case of an event where they will need to be protected from bullets in their own school. That seems like something that should only exist in far off dystopian novels; although in the aftermath of this election, I fear we’re heading in that direction regardless.
That Betsy DeVos seems content to support Trump on eliminating gun-free school zones is a slap in the face to anyone who has lost someone to gun violence, whether they be a parent, teacher, colleague or friend. The streets aren’t safe, the police aren’t safe and now, going to school is apparently up for debate as well.
This is no longer an issue for states rights. The states, clearly, cannot handle this. Remove the guns from these areas at the federal level, and from there, make it incredibly hard to get ahold of guns, especially those of military-grade, for regular citizens.
Changing gun policy is not going to bring back the lives that have been lost to school shootings in this country’s history. Nothing can.
But children are our future. And if we’re not protecting them, we’re just dooming ourselves.