The Gag Rule
It was called the “gag rule”. From 1835 until 1844, the United States House of Representatives banned debate on the pivotal issue of the time – slavery. The Nation spiraled down for nine years towards the depths of secession and Civil War. And the legislature refused to allow discussion of the topic. Former President John Quincy Adams, then a representative from his native Massachusetts, again and again tried to get the “gag rule” lifted. But it took until 1844 to gain enough votes to allow just a debate on slavery.
The rationale: there was nothing but acrimony to be gained by debate. There were not enough votes to change anything, to somehow make the issue “better” for either side. So better to not even bring it up.
School Shooting
Tuesday four Michigan high schools students died and another seven injured at Oxford High School, about thirty miles north of Detroit. They were killed by a “typical” school shooter; a fifteen year old white boy with a semi-automatic pistol. He went through two “clips” and was loading a third when the police arrived and quickly apprehended him in the hall. They captured him uninjured.
While information is limited, we know it was his father’s gun, purchased four days before on “Black Friday”. We don’t know the reasons for the shootings, or what connections the victims had with the assailant. What we do know is this. Nothing more will be done to prevent the next school shooter .
Again
I wrote my first essay on school shootings in “Our America” on February 15th, 2018, almost four years ago. It was called “Again”, and it was written the day after seventeen high school students and teachers were killed in Parkland, Florida. The title was prophetic, the shootings at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School weren’t the first of 2018, and it wouldn’t be the last either. It just happens, again, and again, and again.
It’s so common that it hardly breaks into the news cycle. Yesterday’s catastrophe was the twentieth of this school year (NYT). The word “catastrophe” speaks of some infrequent and overwhelming event, not something so commonplace as “just” another school shooting. But for the parents of those four murdered children, and the wounded, and the students of Oxford High School, their world will never be the same.
Inaction
But what have we done to prevent this? What actions have we taken to protect the students of Oxford, or Parkland, or Pataskala where I am substitute teaching today? As a former school administrator I can tell you there are three answers to that question. First, we have done a lot. Second, we have not come close to “solving” the problem. And third, our students are still at risk, perhaps just as much as they were before Parkland, and even before Columbine, almost twenty-two years ago.
Don’t fault school administrators, or police departments with School Resource Officers, or even the parents of the “shooters” who don’t know what’s going on. Schools have spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours of time trying to protect our kids. Police (or in the case of this school, the Sheriff’s Department) are willing and able to lay their lives down to protect our kids, I have no doubt. So are the teachers in the building, as I was when I was the Dean of Students. But none of that has made much of a difference – twenty school shootings since last August.
Acceptance
There is an old public relations trick. When asked if you’ve solved a problem that you can’t fix, you talk about man-hours, dollars, construction changes, contingency plans. You talk about how much you’ve “worked” the problem. But in the end, none of what we’ve done in the past twenty-two years, or the past four, have made much of a difference.
Some will argue that you can’t know what you stopped; how many schools avoided the “school shooter” experience through all of those “man-hours, dollars, construction changes and contingency plans”. And they would be right. But in the end, we have obviously failed. Failed those four kids who died Tuesday, failed those seven, some still battling for their lives, and failed the kids who huddle in the corners of classrooms in every school in the nation practicing “school shooter” drills. We have not even come close to solving the problem.
Lead from Behind
America is a nation awash in guns. On this, the fifth day of hunting season, here in Pataskala rifles are everywhere. But it’s not just hunting rifles. Our nation is filled with handguns, rapid change ammunition clips, semi-automatic “military style” rifles, and all sorts of ways to more effectively kill not just deer, but people. In our polarized nation, there is no chance that we might find a real solution to school shootings. Oh, politicians on all sides will “say a prayer” and “hold the students in our hearts”. But nothing can be done.
There will be speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives about the need for gun law reforms. There isn’t a “gag order” preventing it. But we are bound by “politics” from acting. That inability is a direct reflection of America’s division over the issue. Just a little more than half of Americans are in favor of more restrictive gun legislation, but 40% live in a household with a gun (Pew). In our time where “leadership” is politically dangerous and politicians read the polls before they determine any “stand”, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we can’t find a solution.
Americans accept this level of gun violence in our schools. We are so determined to have “our guns” that, unlike anywhere else in the world, we allow our children to die. Our inability to even address the problem creates “collateral damage” – the four dead of Oxford, the seventeen dead of Parkland, and the fear every student feels in school in the United States.
It’s our choice – and the good citizens of the United States have made it.