Gun Control Only for Schools Misses the Broader Point

Since the horrific shooting in February at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL that left 17 dead, the public conversation about gun control has focused on school security and (the incredibly misguided notion of) arming teachers. The whole conversation misses the broader point that gun violence affects US citizens everywhere. Focusing only on schools seems to be a deliberate effort on the part of gun rights advocates (see my earlier blog questioning why guns have rights) to limit the conversation. Speaking only about school safety distracts from the broader point that no citizen should or needs to be armed with military-style assault weapons. Assault weapons are not used for hunting, except for hunting people. They have only one purpose—to kill people and to do so in the most devastating way possible.

Of course, our children and schools need security from gun assaults. But military grade assault weapons have been used to kill and maim innocent people at concerts, nightclubs, universities, workplaces, churches, and restaurants, among other places. What does that mean? Do we arm every person who goes to school, university, church, work, a restaurant, a dance club, or a concert with an assault rifle? Do we then somehow magically hope that doing so will reduce gun violence? That seems implausible in the extreme.

School shootings are among the most egregious of these devastating episodes, of course, because they end the lives of young people who had so much life ahead of them. The broader point, however, is that the excessive presence of guns in US society affects every aspect of life today. Regulation of access to guns is an issue for everyone who lives in the US, not just school children, however powerful their voices are proving to be (and those of us who want to control access to guns can only be grateful for that power). Church shootings, concert shootings, nightclub shootings, university shootings, workplace shootings also matter. People are killed and families are ruined by these events, too. It is the wide availability of guns, particularly assault weapons, that makes these incidents significantly more likely when just about anyone who wants to act out can readily get his (mostly men are involved) hands on a gun.

Until we reduce access to assault (and other powerful) weapons now readily available to and in the hands of the general population, appalling incidents of gun violence are likely to continue. It is true that ‘bad guys’ will likely still be able to get their hands on weapons even if access to guns is more restricted. It is true that limitations on access to guns may seem to some to ‘violate’ the Second Amendment. It is also true that the Constitution’s founding fathers did not have assault weapons in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment. Commonsense gun control measures will and do have the impact of reducing the availability of guns to citizens—and young men—who might choose to use them to inflict the most harm on others, for whatever irrational reasons they conjure up. Just by banning assault weapons, bump stocks, and high capacity magazines, we can make a big difference in the security of our schools, churches, workplaces, and other places where people gather in the course of their normal lives.

Taking commonsense measures to control access to guns, particularly assault weapons, however, is the least that we can do to begin secure our children’s—and our own—safety.