I’ve spent the previous 32 years of my life and profession attempting to maintain individuals secure from violence within the office, in our Ok-12 faculties, schools and universities, hospitals, and in metropolis and county authorities companies that serve taxpayers, together with libraries.
I’ve educated dozens of Ok-12 college districts and lots of of faculty staff at school violence-prevention approaches.
If I might be granted only one want that might immediately forestall college shootings, it might not be about anti-bullying campaigns (which vary in success from so much to by no means); extra college useful resource officers (exhausting with such low staffing in legislation enforcement companies); or higher bodily safety at our faculties (the locked “closed campus” mannequin works greatest, particularly as college students enter and go away). No, these aren’t my main considerations.
I’d demand that each single mother or father who has a child at a Ok-12 college, and who has a gun at house, shops it safely.
Even a fast evaluate of the greater than 344 college shootings in 2023 — a quantity collected by the Ok-12 School Shootings Database — paints the horrible image clearly: The vast majority of Ok-12 college shooters underneath 18 get the weapons they use from their properties.
As a library safety advisor and coach since 2000, I’m reminded of the Clovis, N.M., library capturing on Aug. 28, 2017, that killed two library staff and wounded 4 others, together with a 10-year-old boy. The 16-year-old shooter had initially meant to go to the highschool. He as an alternative went into the library first to make use of the toilet, then got here out and shot six individuals. He obtained the weapon from house, from his father’s unlocked gun secure. The benefit with which he acquired the gun and ammunition was beautiful.
On Tuesday, the mom of a Michigan teen who killed 4 college students at his highschool in November 2021 was convicted of four involuntary manslaughter charges, the primary time a mother or father has been convicted in a mass college capturing dedicated by their youngster. She was accused of not securing the gun and ammunition her son used.
Too many properties have unsecured handguns, rifles, and shotguns, sitting in closets, drawers, nightstands and containers in garages. Too many mother and father mistakenly consider their children know to not contact them. That is silly, wishful considering.
Assume that may’t occur with a youthful youngster? In January 2023, a 6-year-old boy who shot and wounded his teacher at a Virginia elementary school mentioned within the aftermath, “I obtained my mother’s gun final night time.”
So how can native libraries and much more so, college libraries, assist cease this? By committing to a nationwide marketing campaign, in partnership with their close by college districts, to place mother and father on discover that they’ve a authorized, ethical, and moral obligation to securely lock up each firearm of their properties. And equally necessary, to offer mother and father straightforward, cheap, and available secure gun storage options.
Set off locks and cable locks are low-cost to purchase and simple to distribute to folks. How about asking the native gun secure distributors in our communities to supply reduced-rate gun safes? You don’t want to purchase a 600-pound gun secure when a lockable gun field will do. Can we ask gun retailers and gun ranges to agree to supply as many free or cheap gun storage options as they will, as a part of a gesture of goodwill?
How about asking our native legislation enforcement companies to accomplice with college and public libraries and discuss such applications and assist libraries and districts distribute the tools?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu mentioned it so properly: “There comes a degree the place we have to cease simply pulling individuals out of the river. We have to go upstream and discover out why they’re falling in.”
Children are getting unsecured weapons from their properties to make use of to shoot others and themselves. The answer is upstream but it surely’s not too distant to make it occur.
