It’s just impossible. Impossible to adequately describe the horror of 19 little children and two of their teachers being murdered in their classroom by an 18-year-old with military-grade weapons. Impossible to adequately articulate the fury and frustration that this just keeps on happening; that what happened in Uvalde, Texas, was not a horrific one-off, but just another day in the USA. And it’s impossible to imagine a scenario in which America’s depraved and dysfunctional relationship with firearms is going to change anytime soon.
If you want to see just how dysfunctional the US obsession with guns is, just take a look at how the right is responding to the horrific shooting. You’d think that 19 dead children might weigh on their conscience a little bit; make them reconsider commonsense gun laws. But, no, they are busy regurgitating all the usual talking points and arguing that guns aren’t actually the problem, everything else is.
First, trans people and immigrants were blamed. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the Republican congressman Paul Gosar tweeted that the shooter was a “transsexual leftist illegal alien”. His source for this lie was the rightwing social network 4Chan, which was busy circulating the picture of a transgender artist and wrongly claiming it was the shooter. (He has now deleted the tweet.)
Then the Federalist found a way to blame Ukraine for the shooting in Texas. “Sandy Hook proved the need to enhance K-12 security,” one headline blared. “Congress armed Ukraine instead.” Gold medal for mental gymnastics right there.
Then, last night, Fox News tried to shift blame on to the parents. Host Laura Ingraham strategically brought Andrew Pollack, the father of a Parkland victim who has previously argued that “guns didn’t kill my daughter, Democratic principles did,” on to her show.
“It’s the parents,” Pollack told Ingraham. “It’s your responsibility where you’re sending your children to school … You need to check where your kids go to school. You need to go back to school and see. Is there a single point of entry? Do you have guards at the school?”
He went on to suggest that it’s better for parents to take their kids out “of public school and put them in a private school because a lot of these private schools, they take security way more serious … Parents it’s your responsibility where you take your children.” Ingraham was very pleased with that analysis. “Andrew is exactly right,” she concluded.
Pollack has previously expressed the idea that regulating guns is not the answer to preventing school shootings, and has advocated for schools to put in more “safety” measures like barriers, bulletproof glass and security officers. Ingraham pressed him on that point, stating that “[schools] still don’t have those safety mechanisms in place”.
There you go: it’s all the parents fault! If you don’t have the money to send your kids to private school then it’s your fault if they get shot!
Schools should not resemble prisons. They shouldn’t have to be fitted with barriers and staffed with armed guards to keep kids safe. Parents shouldn’t have to buy their children increasingly popular bulletproof backpacks. Kids shouldn’t have to go through active shooter-drills the moment they get into preschool. Not just because these sorts of measures are completely dystopian but because they aren’t actually effective. The vast majority of public schools – 96% in 2015 and 2016 – now conduct some form of lockdown drill. Rather than preparing kids for a shooting, some experts warn that they are just anxiety-inducing security theater.
Staffing schools with police officers is not the answer either. Since 1998, the government has invested over $1bn to increase police presence in schools; according to one study only 1% of schools reported having police officers on-site in 1975 but by 2018, about 58% of schools reported having a police presence. There were already armed school district police officers at the school in Uvalde and they did not stop the shooter, who was wearing body armor. A sergeant with the Texas department of public safety told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “there were several law enforcement that engaged the suspect, but he was able to make entry into the school”.
If guns made people safer, then the United States would be the safest place in the world. How many more children have to die before the right accept that the answer to bad guys with guns is not good guys with guns, it’s getting rid of guns.
