Armed kids at schools fuel grim record in 2021
Over 40 shootings on K-12 campuses affect 34,000 kids
The day before he died, Bennie Hargrove told his grandmother he needed advice.
It was Aug. 12, the second day of eighth grade, and Bennie confided he had stopped a classmate and some other teens from beating up a younger boy at their Albuquerque middle school earlier that day.
The 13-year-old’s disclosure made Vanessa Sawyer nervous. Sometimes, she said she told her grandson, it’s better to mind your own business.
“That’s just not in me,” she recalled Bennie saying.
The next afternoon, Bennie confronted the bully, Juan Saucedo Jr., near the school track, another child would later tell police. Bennie asked Juan, also 13, to quit picking on his friends, insisting if he wanted to fight someone, he should fight Bennie.
“I’m done with this [expletive],” the child heard Juan say in Spanish just before he pulled a black handgun out of his backpack and, according to police, fire six rounds into Bennie’s body.
The shooting at Washington Middle School was one of at least 42 acts of gun violence committed on K-12 campuses during regular hours in 2021, the most during any year since at least 1999, according to a
Washington Post database. The nation smashed the previous record of 30, despite most schools remaining closed to in-person classes for the first two months of the year. In total, about 34,000 students were exposed to gun violence in 2021, bringing the tally since the Columbine High massacre to more than 285,000.
It’s impossible to know with certainty what’s driven the surge in incidents, though researchers have speculated a spike in gun sales, soaring rates of overall violence, the pandemic and the chaos of the past year all played some role.
Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist who has worked for years with grieving families, suspects America’s societal fissures have had a substantial impact on children’s behavior.
“The more connected you feel, the less likely you will be to dehumanize, demonize, devalue and destroy,” said Perry. “Stress is alleviated by positive human connection and lack of connection increases stress ... but I think lethal violence to others is more related to the marginalization, isolation, social fragmentation than the stress of the pandemic.”
The shooting that killed four teens at Michigan’s Oxford High School on Nov. 30 was the worst rampage since 2018, bringing a wave of new attention to an ongoing crisis.
The case has brought unprecedented scrutiny to the responsibility mothers and fathers bear when their children use the adults’ unsecured weapons to open fire at schools. Less than a week after the attack, the county prosecutor charged the couple with four counts of involuntary manslaughter for “unconscionable” negligence she said allowed their troubled son to gain access to their firearm.
The Hargrove family says Bennie was once a bully. He’d been picked on when he was younger and smaller, so he learned to do the same.
But it seemed that at Washington Middle School, something in him changed. His boxing coach played a role, teaching him people who are strong should protect those who aren’t. His grandmother suspected he also decided he didn’t want to make other kids feel the way he once did. For the first time in a long time, his family was hopeful for what his future held.
Then he was gone.
The family’s attorneys have argued in a lawsuit the shooting should never have happened, and they blame many more people than the boy who pulled the trigger.
Juan had showed off the gun to “multiple children” hours before Bennie was killed, a witness told police, but the lawsuit alleges Juan might also have brought it to school in the days prior. The attorneys contend school officials should have known and intervened. The accused shooter’s parents are also to blame, the attorneys argue. If Juan didn’t have access to his father’s gun, Bennie would still be alive.
State Rep. Pamelya Herndon, D-Albuquerque, agrees. Her office is just down the street from the middle school, and she heard the police helicopters buzzing overhead after the shooting.
She also soon realized that state law provided no clear way to hold an adult criminally responsible after their negligence with a gun led to bloodshed. New Mexico is one of 20 states that has no child access prevention law.
Herndon began composing new legislation and hopes to see it garner the governor’s support and become law in 2022.
Before that could happen, though, Herndon knew the bill needed the right name, and she found it: the Bennie Hargrove Gun Safety Act.