MISSOURI FUNDS BLEEDING CONTROL, NOT GUN CONTROL
No one could rationally oppose Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s announcement this month of $50 million in state safety grants for schools. Who would be against improved school infrastructure, immediate access to medical equipment and other precautions to keep kids safe?
Still, did the Republican governor pause at all as his office outlined some of the details of the grants — like “physical security upgrades” and “bleeding control kits”?
These once-novel concepts have become staples in U.S. schools today for one reason: School shootings have become an almost routine phenomenon in America, driven by the flood of unregulated firearms throughout society. It’s a phenomenon enabled by the stubborn refusal of Republicans, in Missouri and nationally, to allow even the lightest, most commonsense restrictions on guns.
That Republicans who control this state (and many others) recognize the crisis enough to provide funding for bleeding control kits, while still refusing to take simple steps that would prevent the bleeding in the first place, speaks volumes about the depth of their dedication to America’s destructive gun culture.
Since the current era of school shootings effectively began with the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in 1999, there have been almost 400 school shootings in America, with more than 200 fatalities of students and educators (not counting the shooters), according to an ongoing Washington Post study.
The newspaper calculates that more than 357,000 children have experienced gun violence in schools over those years.
They include the roughly 350 kids at St. Louis’ Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, where a former student last October killed a student and teacher, and wounded seven others, before being killed by police.
After the shooter failed to pass a background check from a licensed gun dealer, he was able to buy a gun from an unlicensed dealer with no background check required — something that couldn’t legally happen in states like Illinois, which require background checks for all gun purchases. Missouri doesn’t.
The shooter’s family knew of his mental health issues and tried to get police to confiscate his guns. But because Missouri’s leaders have refused to pass a red-flag law to allow courts to remove weapons from people with demonstrable mental health issues, there was no legal way to do that.
The 19-year-old shooter would have been too young to buy his gun in Illinois, but the minimum age in Missouri is 18. And the fact that Missouri allows open-carry of guns with no permit required meant he was able to legally approach the school with the weapon.
Missouri has been relatively lucky — so far — in that there haven’t been any recent mass school shootings of the scope seen since last year in Uvalde, Texas, and Nashville. But there’s no reason to believe that luck will hold. School shootings are increasing in number around the country, hitting records for each of the past two years.
Yet Missouri’s Republican leaders have spent the past decade loosening the state’s gun laws, removing background check requirements and permit requirements, allowing guns to be purchased by almost anyone and carried freely almost anywhere. It’s clearly no coincidence that Missouri’s onceaverage gun death rate is now consistently among the nation’s highest.
The depth of the Legislature’s gunmania was surreally demonstrated earlier this year, when lawmakers couldn’t be moved to specify in statute that children shouldn’t be allowed to openly carry guns in public.
Until this ideological fever finally breaks, citizens will have to be content with stronger school doors and medical kits in classrooms. Because elected leaders refuse to disarm those who would shoot kids in their schools, providing funding to control the bleeding afterward is the least they can do. Literally.