SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When I was in about fifth grade, my elementary school held an event where the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office came and talked to us about … something. I’m sure it was crime- and safety-related. There may have been a grown man sweating inside a McGruff the Crime Dog costume; I don’t really remember, to be honest.
What I do remember is getting fingerprinted.
At age 10, I happily handed over my unique genetic information to be stored somewhere in the county’s vaults forevermore. It’s a decision I’ve often regretted, not because I wish to commit a crime, but because our right to privacy has been eroding ever since — usually under the guise of safety or technological advances.
But in the state of Texas, fingerprinting of school kids has moved from invading the privacy of families to having the government give up on those kids altogether.
The Lone Star State has begun fingerprinting school children, and then uses that DNA to identify kids after mass shootings at schools.
Though these are Texas school kids, Californians should take note. While our legislature actually cares about the privacy of school kids, we also have too many school shootings.
Just last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which requires California-headquartered social networks to turn on the highest privacy settings possible by default for its young users. These online platforms must also turn off features like location tracking that could put children’s privacy at risk. That sort of legislation is why California is considered a national leader in online privacy.
Newsom and a majority of California legislators want to protect school kids from mass shootings and they have demonstrated it with some of the toughest gun laws in the nation. But even this hasn’t stopped these shootings in California, because guns are so readily available outside of our borders.
Last month, Texas began sending home fingerprint and DNA testing kits for every public school child from kindergarten to sixth grade, thanks to a state law passed last year, Senate Bill 2158.
The new law was sold to the public as an effort “to help locate and return a missing or trafficked child.” But families of murdered school kids say they are horrified by their state’s efforts to collect the DNA of children even as their bodies are piling up.
“Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose child, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Robb Elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, said on Twitter.
This is the kind of insanity that makes me want to wait to have children. That day may never come if I can’t trust my country to keep those kids safe at a parade, or a concert, or while they sit at their desks at school.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours,” says the Texas pamphlet sent to parents. The gift is a DNA kit and inkless fingerprint kit that parents would turn over to law enforcement in the event of an emergency.
Texas will spend $8 million over the next two years to fingerprint children, despite the fact that Texas officials don’t expect more than 10 percent of families to participate.
“It’s tragic that we need to make plans that assume mass shootings will continue, but we know they will,” said UC Davis doctor, Garen Wintemute, an expert on the public health crisis of gun violence and a pioneer in the field of injury epidemiology and firearm violence.
“The key is not to choose that approach at the expense of others. Our primary focus should be on preventing shootings,” Wintemute said.
It is tragic. And it made me think of the 10-year-old I was on that day when my friends and I enjoyed the attention of adults and the naive, childish fun of rolling our fingers in ink.
Since that Texas law was passed in late 2021, there have been nearly 40 school shootings nationwide, and three in that state alone. That includes the horrifying incident in Uvalde earlier this year, according to EducationWeek, which annually tracks the number of gun-related injuries and deaths at schools in America.
Some of the parents at Robb Elementary in Uvalde were required to take DNA tests to claim the remains of their children. Their bodies had been so catastrophically damaged by an 18-year-old who legally purchased two semiautomatic rifles and nearly 400 rounds of ammunition that the dead children were no longer identifiable on sight.
What if Texas spent $8 million on gun control? What if they dedicated that and more to protecting children? And who are we kidding, guns still proliferate on our streets in California. Think of the school children murdered by their father in Sacramento earlier this year, and the young people gunned down on K Street just a month later.
I feel safer in California, but not safe enough. I’m glad I don’t live in Texas, but that’s not comfort enough.
Why?
Because even though these Texas families can opt out of the DNA program, it still sends a clear message to every parent in a hard-line Second Amendment state: Your government has given up on protecting your children in favor of protecting their gun rights.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Robin Epley is an opinion writer for The Sacramento Bee
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