As a student, I wish I could feel safe
September 17, 2006: Duquesne University. November 13, 2013: Brashear High School. January 19, 2022: Oliver Citywide Academy. Since 2006, the year I was born, the city of Pittsburgh has endured three school shootings that killed one and injured eight.
If those statistics included shootings, deaths and injuries that did not occur in schools, but which involved school-aged children, the number of lives lost and affected would be much greater. Gun violence at home and in communities has cut short and warped far too many lives.
In those 16 years, nothing of lasting value has been done to address our dangerous, poorly regulated system of gun rights and restrictions. Federal lawmakers again assure us — students, families and teachers — that something will be done to limit juvenile access to guns and make students safe. I should, after promises from the highest levels of America’s leadership, feel like I’m out of harm’s way.
I don’t.
That’s because change is unlikely at all levels of government. The two shooters at Duquesne? They were 19. The Brashear shooter was 16. The Buffalo shooter, 18. Santa Fe, 17; Oxford, 15; Uvalde, 18. Yet raising the minimum age for firearm purchases — common sense legislation by any standard — cannot be accomplished. It has been 16 years of unfulfilled promises, assurances and guarantees.
Nationally, Democrats push largely symbolic gun control legislation in an evenly divided Senate. They seem to rely on a hazy dream that a combination of persistence and mounting tragedy will wear down Republican senators into crossing party lines. Let the bodies pile up, and perhaps the votes will too.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic gun control advocates face a General Assembly controlled by Republicans who have so far refused to allow any of the 70 pieces of gun reform legislation onto either the House or Senate floors. Republicans look to pass laws expanding gun access later this year.
At the city level, change is impossible because a state preemption prevents municipalities from establishing their own gun rights legislation. While both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have attempted to challenge this law in the courts, the state’s judiciary has so far ruled against them.
In the Pittsburgh Public School system, the only action taken this year to prevent gun violence was the district-wide lockdown implemented on May 25. As far as I can tell, it was nothing more than symbolism. A determined shooter will not comply with lockdown protocols.
Each level of government passes the buck. Politicians at the national level hope for state and local action, and those at the state and local level hope that someone at the national level will take responsibility and bear the political cost.
They all hope for a magical solution, some deus ex machina to resolve the problem without them having to take a risk. We should call those who refuse to act politicians. It would be a farce to call them leaders.
Of school shootings since 1970, 59% have been carried out by people under 21. Raising the minimum age to purchase and carry a firearm should be the first enacting clause of any gun reform legislation. Unfortunately, Republicans do not recognize this, and offer three other ways to prevent school shootings: increasing school security, arming teachers and focusing on mental health.
Increasing school security would do little. Assailants could easily target children on playgrounds. Arming teachers would do nothing. If giving people guns would decrease violence, the United States would be the safest country in the world. Focusing on mental health would help. But the same Republicans that suggest it also oppose programs like Medicaid, which fund mental health services.
Salvador Ramos was only able to buy his assault weapons because he had recently turned 18. The simplest bipartisan way to decrease gun violence in schools is to increase the minimum firearm purchasing age.
A school is intended to be a place to learn, but the school shootings and the failure of public officials to act have made it hard for school to feel like school. In an open environment, many students and I feel heightened anxiety when we see an unfamiliar face. In maximum lockdown, we feel depressed and stifled. Firearm control that would make an open environment safer would make it easier for school to feel like school. And for students like us to learn.
With politicians failing to act, we must encourage a grassroots movement akin to Civil Rights of the 60’s and Pride of the 70’s. Students around America will need to stage walkouts, parades and marches to speak up for the end of school gun violence. Organizations like March for our Lives, Everytown and Wear Orange will need to take broader charge.
If they don’t, gun reform will fade out of the spotlight and change will be all but impossible to produce. Until another shooting occurs, and the cycle begins anew.