The 13-year-old boy who shot Bennie six occasions introduced his father’s loaded gun to high school and confirmed it off to different kids earlier than pulling it out and utilizing it to finish Bennie’s life, in keeping with a police assertion.
The shooter’s father stated he
realized his gun was missing round midday that day. However by the point he drove to the varsity to test, his son was being led away in handcuffs. It wasn’t the primary time a member of the household had introduced a gun to campus: in 2018, the shooter’s father was
banned from Highland High School additionally in Albuquerque after taking pictures and injuring one other dad or mum within the pupil pick-up lane, in keeping with a report within the Albuquerque Journal, which famous that the District Legal professional declined to cost him after figuring out he had a “legitimate protection declare.” “Given the daddy’s historical past, our detectives are taking a look at each issue that will have contributed to Friday’s tragic taking pictures,” Police Chief Harold Medina informed the Journal. “It isn’t acceptable {that a} baby had entry to a gun and took it to high school.”
The mindless killing of Bennie — and the sooner incident within the shooter’s household — are only-in-America tragedies. Whereas college students and educators world wide are coping with the uncertainty of going again to the classroom amid a Covid-19 surge, most are packing masks, spacing out desks and stocking up available sanitizer to arrange.
Only in the United States are kids and academics additionally being requested — within the now regularized shooter drills which can be a part of the varsity yr — to crouch below desks, cover in closets and apply what they might do if a shooter opened hearth on campus.
It’s absurd to ask the nation’s kids to kneel as a result of our lawmakers will not stand as much as gun lobbyists. However the reality is that the return to high school may imply a return to gun violence if we as adults don’t act.
Gun sales surged 64% in the course of the pandemic, and
new research from Everytown for Gun Security, a nonprofit group that advocates for gun management and in opposition to gun violence, estimates that 5.4 million kids now reside in properties with at the least one loaded, unlocked gun, up from 4.6 million kids six years in the past. The varsity yr hasn’t even begun in lots of states, however we have already witnessed
at least 15 instances of youngsters and teenagers bringing weapons to high school in at the least 12 totally different states. Educators are bracing themselves.
The fact is that after greater than a yr and a half of residing by way of the stress, isolation and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic,
many of our kids are not all right. Reduce off from sources like in-person steerage counselors, psychologists and college assist employees, many kids and teenagers are struggling like by no means earlier than. Some reside in households nonetheless coping with the financial fallout from the pandemic. Others are looking for connection and fight bullying after a yr of on-line studying. Regardless of the challenges college students are dealing with, including easy accessibility to weapons to the combination is a assured recipe for tragedy. Everytown’s analysis reveals
74% of school shooters below the age of 18 obtained the gun they used from their residence or a good friend’s residence.
And it is not simply college shootings we needs to be apprehensive about. Unintentional shootings by kids — solely preventable tragedies —
rose 30% during the pandemic and now happen about as soon as per day in our nation, and
the victims are overwhelmingly other children, in keeping with knowledge from RAND Company. Even earlier than the pandemic, we noticed the firearm suicide fee amongst kids and teenagers
rise a staggering 59% over the previous decade. The frequent denominator in these tragedies is simple entry to weapons, and we should handle that root trigger if we wish to defend our youngsters.
It has by no means been extra pressing to behave, as a result of whereas firearms had been already the main reason behind demise for youngsters and teenagers earlier than the pandemic, the disaster has solely gotten worse. Gun violence in opposition to kids 12 and below elevated 50% from 2019 to 2020, and hospital visits by kids who had been injured by weapons
rose by nearly 40% final yr, in keeping with a latest examine printed within the journal Pediatrics. These alarming traits have continued into 2021.
However our kids do not must reside — and die — like this. It is not about educating kids and teenagers to face as much as a bully who seems to have a gun, the way in which that police stated Bennie did, or traumatizing them with excessive lively shooter drills that simulate a taking pictures. It is not the duty of youngsters to know to not contact loaded, unsecured weapons once they discover them at their residence or a good friend’s residence.
As a substitute, it is on us — all of us — as adults to ensure weapons are saved unloaded, locked and separate from ammunition. It is on all of us to ask our fellow mother and father, neighbors and relations how weapons are saved of their properties. And it is on all of us to demand that safe storage insurance policies change into a required a part of the duty of gun possession.
At Mothers Demand Motion, a corporation I based, volunteers in each state are doing their half, pushing college board members and state legislators to move resolutions that guarantee safe storage supplies are despatched residence with each pupil. Because of their arduous work,
more than 1.5 million students now attend faculties the place this life-saving info is simply a part of the back-to-school routine, alongside college lunch types and film day packages.
However extra work should be performed to maintain our kids protected. Solely by taking up the gun foyer on the group, state and federal stage can we guarantee gun violence does not make it to our faculties within the first place. Again to high school does not must imply again to gun violence. As adults, we will and should do higher. Our youngsters’s lives depend upon it.
