Searching for answers

This week I’ve been catching bits and pieces of the trial of the morally bankrupt, unscrupulous Alex Jones. It is hard to imagine the kind of coldhearted calculation required to do what he did – to heap pain and abuse onto people who have already suffered the worst imaginable tragedy, the loss of a young child to senseless violence. And yet, he did this. For what? To protect a nation’s ability to freely access weapons of war. And when confronted, Jones lied. He lies still. But his lies seem to be catching up to him. It will be little solace to his victims, but perhaps the rest of us can feel some sense of justice watching Jones fall.

Makenna Lee Elrod was a 10-year-old girl with a smile that could light up the room. Makenna was killed in her classroom in Uvalde on May 24. In her honor, I wrote this week to my House representative, Lisa McClain. McClain has recently doubled down on her position that the solution to gun violence in schools is to harden the schools. She is a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment and will consider no effort to slow down the stockpiling of assault weapons in our country. I wrote to her although I am under no illusion that I might dent that stance. Instead, I addressed the only two concrete suggestions she made for hardening schools. Her first suggestion (an idea picked up after the Uvalde shooting) is to have only one entrance to school buildings. On paper this looks solid. One entrance is surely easy to safeguard. In fact, if you were to visit schools, you would find that most already have this policy in place. The problem is this: the buildings must, for safety’s sake, have multiple doorways. While they can be locked to the outside, they must remain open from the inside. There are other dangers besides school shooters, more commonplace dangers, like fires. And because the doors must be open from the inside, they will be opened, regularly, throughout each day. Doors will be opened for fire drills, for recess, for daily deliveries. There will be quick dashes out the nearest door to retrieve a forgotten book or lunch in a student’s or staff member’s car. Someone might step out for a smoke, or a rejuvenating breath of fresh air. The reasons doors will be opened are myriad. Will they always be quickly closed afterward? Will the locking mechanism never falter? Will a back door propped open for a daily milk carton delivery be noticed by someone casing the school?

A single entrance a good policy. It’s not foolproof.

And as far as safeguarding the entrance goes, the recent failures of school security officers in Uvalde, Parkland, and Oxford should give everyone pause. Even trained security officers are human.

McClain’s other suggestion is to “train the teachers” to recognize disturbed students. This is problematic on so many levels. First, not all school shooters are students. The Uvalde shooter was not. The Sandy Hook shooter was not. Second, McClain assumes teachers are not already adept at spotting troubled students. This is insulting. As a former teacher, I can tell you it is something we do, whether formally trained in this or not. Even in the hectic day of a high school teacher who sees over a hundred students a day, disturbed kids are noticed. They are the ones we talk with our colleagues about, the ones we call home about, the ones we hold staffings on, the ones we lose sleep over.

But once the problem is noticed, what next? Schools are already understaffed, guidance counselors are asked to take on unreasonable case loads, and social workers are simply not always available. If parents refuse suggested interventions, what can school staffs do? In the case of the Oxford shooting, the shooter was known to his teachers, who worried about him. The very day of the shooting, he had been removed from his classroom after the teacher became disturbed by his drawings. The boy’s parents were called in, and it was suggested they take him home. They refused. Many say the school’s response was inadequate. But let me ask this question: is it a crime to draw violent pictures? What about students’ rights, including the right to draw what they wish? Does Congresswoman McClain suggest teachers can identify and REMOVE disturbed students from school? Does she have any idea how often teachers recognize disturbed kids? Do we now accuse all of them of being potential school shooters? How many laws will that break? And all this, to protect the right of others to buy and carry assault weapons? To me, the illogical hypocrisy is stunning.

It's just more of the same bizarre dance gun rights advocates do each time there is a mass shooting – let’s look at all of the ways we can limit our society’s freedoms without touching access to guns. And all of the suggested solutions come up short. To be honest, so do most gun safety bills. But one thing is certain: attacks involving assault weapons always result in carnage. There is one solution to that: ban assault weapons.