School Safety

            The safety of children and youth in their schools has been much in the news over the past six weeks since the last school massacre. Leftists quickly used the tragedy to push for gun control. They seem to believe that more gun control laws will stop the very people who ignore the current laws. They sing only one refrain – gun control.

            Other people are wiser and realize that evil is to blame for school massacres – not guns. They are the ones who are seeking other ways to bring safety to the schools. John G. Malcolm and Amy Swearer from The Heritage Foundation think that looking for common traits in the killers would be a good place to start. They remind us that twenty years have passed since the tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado. Since basically nothing has been done during those years to stop murders at school, it is “time to get serious about school safety.”

            The fact that nothing has been done to stop the violence is one of the problems that is triggering anger in the rising generation. Anger is driving the students, but it is also allowing them to be used as pawns in the hands of the gun control movement. Students should not only be safe in their schools, but they should also be safe from being used by adults to further their evil and unconstitutional agendas.

            Malcolm and Swearer say that “we need to focus on a range of pressing issues – including mental health, family breakdown, culture, media, and more” because our “children and grandchildren deserve to be safe at school.” However, we must be “ready to get serious about school safety” before we can accomplish it. As long as leftists are driving the national discussion and focusing on gun control, the conversation will continue to be about gun control and never include anything else.

            The authors say that the school killers “are significantly more likely than the average population to suffer from undiagnosed or untreated mental illness; they often come from broken homes; and their shootings may be related to economic insecurity.” The rest of the article discusses these three factors. The article concludes with these paragraphs.

Real solutions to problems start with facts, and the fact is that school shooters often share the same traits – traits that are not connected to or related to guns.

If we are going to get serious about school safety, we must soberly acknowledge the fact that mental illness, broken families, and economic insecurity all play a role in many, if not most, school shootings.

Addressing those societal ills, with proven strategies will help reduce not only school shootings, but other violent acts by at-risk youth.

            If we are serious about school safety, we must eliminate the talk about gun control and start discussing the real issues in the lives of young people who choose to kill their peers. We should be searching for reasons why there are so many mentally disturbed young people.

            Is this instability caused by the breakdown in families, or is it a result of drugs, violent video games, etc. If it is the breakdown in the family, what are we personally willing to do about strengthening families? If it is the result of violent video games or violent media in other forms, what are we personally willing to do to eliminate that media from our lives? If the rising generation felt more secure in their home lives and were not under the influence of violent media, maybe there would not be so much mental illness among the group!