On Feb. 14, 2018, 17 people walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSDHS) in Parkland, Florida expecting just another day. These people, 14 of them students and three faculty, would not live to see the end of the day. Since then, the news has been dominated by the survivors of the Parkland Shooting.
A deputy sheriff, tasked with protecting the school, stayed outside of the building as the shooting took place. Students dialed 911 so much they were told to stop calling, that people were on the way.
The Next Generation
Young and outspoken Florida students like Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg have made themselves heard and people are paying attention. Some for better, others for worse. Many of the survivors who have refused to let this issue be removed from the forefront have become the target of internet trolls and conspiracy theorists. Claims are made that Hogg and others are “crisis actors,” —people who show up at the aftermath of shootings to push a political agenda.
Many of these survivors are now receiving death threats.
Gonzalez, Hogg and the other Parkland survivors who have chosen to speak out are a perfect example of this new generation.
This is a generation that was born and raised on the internet. Attempts by political pundits to silence them on Twitter through barbed comments and jabs have fallen flat. Many of the survivors have even created entire threads on their Twitter feeds making fun of conspiracy theorists and internet trolls.
This is also a generation that has not known a world without a school shooting. I was in grade school when the Columbine High School Massacre took place in 1999. This generation has not known a time when school shootings weren’t commonplace.
According to Westword, a Denver weekly newspaper, the Parkland Shooting marks 208 school shootings since Columbine. It took Shepard Smith of Fox News over two minutes to list all 25 school shootings that have taken place between Columbine and Parkland.
The Answer Is: Teachers?
As I’m writing this, another school shooting has been added to the list as a teacher barricaded himself in his Dalton, Georgia classroom and fired his handgun through a window. With this latest incident, fortunately, nobody was hurt. It does, however, add another talking point to the discussion as both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and President Trump have suggested arming teachers to protect students.
Teachers are already often tasked with the impossible. Cuts continue to be made to education and the State of Wyoming is proposing cutting $76.2 million over the next two years. Despite this, we now expect teachers to become bodyguards for our children and seem to think this will adequately address any future shootings when, not if, they happen. Teachers are human just like anybody else. They could become a shooter just as easily as deter one.
Wasn’t that the point of having school resource officers (SROs), security cameras, metal detectors and so many other safety measures placed in our schools? Of the 208 209 school shootings that have occurred since Columbine, how many of them have been stopped by an armed SRO placed in the school? Conversely, how many students have found their way into the “school-to-prison pipeline” since the introduction of SROs into schools?
MSDHS had all the safety measures expected of high density schools in urban areas. It had an SRO, limited entryways and students had performed active shooter drills repeatedly. The shooter, as in so many other school shootings, was not some stranger who could be deterred by these actions though. The shooter was one of their own.
It’s Not Just In Your Head
So often after a shooting takes place, blame is laid upon mental illness. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), however, people with mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of it.
That’s not to say the United States doesn’t have a problem with mental illness. According to NAMI, 43.8 million adults in the U.S. experience mental illness in a given year and less than half have received treatment. Over 20 percent of students between the ages of 13 and 18 experience a severe mental disorder at some point and 70 percent of youth in the juvenile justice system have at least one mental health condition. Just over half of children between the ages of eight and 15 have received any mental health services in the last year.
Yes, we have a mental health issue in our country. It is not, however, the cause of the shootings that have taken place in schools or any other location. To call any of these shooters mentally ill stigmatizes some of the most vulnerable people in our society and prevents them from seeking the mental healthcare that is so desperately needed.
Bullied and Bullets Don’t Go Together
Another common scapegoat is the “shooter who was bullied in school.” If every school shooter was a victim of bullying, most shootings wouldn’t be done by straight white males. What we would see would be shootings done by students of color or LGBTQ students. According to stopbullying.gov, LGBTQ students are at a more heightened risk of bullying than their classmates. Over half of LGBTQ students have reported being the victims of cyberbullying while just nine percent of students between grades 6-12 have reported being cyberbullied.
In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducted the Youth Risk Surveillance System Survey in which they surveyed more than 15 thousand high school students. The analysis of the data received found bullied students were twice as likely to bring a weapon of some kind to school due to factors including feeling unsafe, having property stolen/damaged, having been in a fight or having been threatened or injured by a weapon.
Additionally, according to stopbullying.gov, 12 out of 15 of the school shooters in the 1990s had a history of being bullied.
Research Off Target and Off Limits
To place the blame squarely on either mental illness or bullying, or both, is not only unethical—it is dangerous. What’s even more dangerous is to blame either of these factors and do nothing about them!
Just over half of the adults in the U.S. who experience substance abuse also have a co-occuring mental illness, according to NAMI. Substance abuse, however, is treated criminally instead of medically. The resources for overcoming mental illness and substance abuse simply aren’t there.
Add the ease in which one can obtain a firearm. Nikolas Cruz, the former student who was the shooter in Parkland, Florida, obtained his weapon legally. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and other law enforcement agencies ignored red flags about Cruz.
Meanwhile, the CDC cannot conduct a study on gun violence in the U.S. due to the Dickey Amendment passed in 1996 and lobbied by the NRA. The amendment clearly states “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
We have information on mental illness and how it affects our society. We have information on bullying and how it affects our children. We have purposefully limited information on firearms and how they affect our country.
The late Jay Dickey, after whom the Dickey Amendment is named, later expressed regret at introducing the amendment. In 2012, Dickey and Mark L. Rosenberg, the former director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, penned an op-ed arguing that the CDC should be able to research gun violence. Since its introduction, any attempt to repeal the amendment has been unsuccessful.
In 2015, Courtney Lenard, a spokeswoman for the CDC, told the Washington Post that the agency could conduct firearms-related research “within the context of our efforts to address youth violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, and suicide” but that their resources were very limited.
A Path Forward?
Where do we go from here? Since Columbine, 122 people have lost their lives in school shootings. In December 2012, 20 first-grade children lost their lives.
One thing that can be gathered from the 19 years since Columbine is that the solutions attempted so far have not worked.
Meanwhile, the free market has taken action. Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart have both announced that they will not sell firearms to anyone under the age of 21. I will not say for certain if this is a step in the right direction, but it is at least a step.
Whatever your thoughts on the students of MSDHS who have made their voices heard—they have, without a doubt, forced a conversation.
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“We are tired of practicing school shooter drills and feeling scared of something we should never have to think about. We are tired of being ignored. So we are speaking up for those who don’t have anyone listening to them, for those who can’t talk about it just yet, and for those who will never speak again.”
~ Emma Gonzalez.
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