Must be based on fact

We are free to disagree on the best way to keep students safe in school, but any argument worth considering should be based on facts. That’s why it is so disappointing that Sunday’s lead editorial, “Demand workable actions: Lies, damn lies and statistics once again,” is based on false assumptions easily dispelled with minimal fact-checking.

The piece hinged on evidence presented by Arkansas Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense chapter leader Eve Jorgensen, who addressed the Arkansas School Safety Commission last week on proven ways to keep schoolchildren safe. Your writer wrongly assumed all of the shootings in the the FBI report she cited happened on school campuses. In fact, the study included shootings in schools, shopping malls, homes, movie theaters, government buildings and other public spaces. Of those 250 shootings, only seven were stopped by armed bystanders, while 22 of them were stopped by unarmed bystanders.

Your conclusion, that perhaps more shootings weren’t stopped by armed campus guards because there are not many armed campuses, falls flat when one considers the shootings we’re discussing happened in a range of locations, many of them where civilian carrying of firearms is legal. Your assertion that the unarmed bystanders who successfully stopped shooters should be given “firearms for the next time a crazy person shows up at school and starts spraying bullets” is an outrageous and irresponsible suggestion.

Both Parkland and Santa Fe had armed guards. The massacres happened anyway. Rather than turning schools into armed fortresses, why not keep guns out of the wrong hands in the first place? We know that safe storage, universal background checks on all gun sales (not currently required in Arkansas) and red flag laws to temporarily remove weapons in crisis situations are proven ways to save lives. Until we tackle the epidemic of gun violence in the United States as a whole, gun violence will continue to make its way on to school grounds.

AUSTIN BAILEY

Little Rock