back to school
When asked by a shielded onlooker as to why he was doing this, the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooter, who had earlier posted that the fair peddled “overpriced sh*t to Silicon Valley white tw*ts”, replied “Because I’m really angry”. Angry? I’ll say! Never before have three innocent people, irrespective of their breath, been slaughtered in the name of the humble root vegetable.
This shooting, along with other recent massacres in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, have again brought gun violence in the US back centre stage. Mind, in a country with 120 guns in civilian ownership per 100 people, it never seems to out of the news for long. As shocking, is the fact that last year there were sixty-one separate shooting fatalities in their schools, the highest number since records began. Just consider those statistics again: for every 100 people there are 120 guns in circulation and during 2018 they were used sixty-one times to murder children and their teachers.
The scenes of the worst tragedies are, even here in the UK, seared into all our minds: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Parkland. So, when Tiny Hands pitched the idea of formally arming teachers, I, like all rational logical liberals, couldn’t quite believe my ears. “If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly” he stated. Whilst probably seeking to accentuate his point by making those strange ‘OK’ circles with his small appendages. WTF. Shoot-outs in the staff room. Stand-offs behind the bicycle sheds. But, as I look into the matter further, incredulously, unbelievably, does he have a point?
We’re now painfully aware that educational establishments, notwithstanding metal-detecting frames, on-site police and uniformed armed private-protection personnel, are known for their relatively low-levels of security and access control, and consequently suffer a disproportionately high number of attacks. Furthermore, they’re, often committed by their own students: twelve pupils at Columbine killed by two students, aged seventeen and eighteen; thirty two murdered at Virginia Tech by a twenty-three year old student; twenty six slaughtered at Sandy Hook by a man barely out of college; seventeen at Parkland by a recently expelled pupil. Subsequently, it’s fair to assume that, as gun legislation is not going to imminently or radically alter, this shocking, scandalous situation is going to continue and the only questions are where’s next, and when? Many US educators now consider their main priority is primarily to keep children safe. And then to educate them.
The intensive and, it has to be said, apparently thorough, School Active-Shooter Response Training Courses seek to prepare teachers for what many consider an inevitability within their classrooms. Even within the elementary school system (infant/junior) all pupils actively practice ‘lockdowns’ where the schools run through the steps and actions to be taken during an armed attack. In short, the succession of steps are run, and if you can’t run, hide, and if you have no alternative, fight back. The guidance for teachers and older students states “Be aggressive. Improvise weapons. Commit to your actions.” It is also policy to keep any armed teacher’s identity entirely secret and it is hoped that the ‘armed personnel on campus’ signs will provide the deterrent intended.
The scenario obviously raises the question of ‘what would you do? It is a sobering thought. Teachers, by their very nature, are non-aggressive, non-confrontational individuals. They’re about as far from gun-toting, trigger-happy cowboys as can be. Their instinct is to help, encourage, nurture and negotiate, and protect. They’re going to put themselves in harm’s way by naturally coming between the danger and their charges. They’re going to go into that room, put themselves in the line of fire, whether they have a gun or not.
Other than dramatic action on all level of current and future gun control I don’t claim to have any answers to this issue and do keep returning to my default position of questioning how actually increasing the number of guns can help ease the situation and how a Glock in the gym or Luger in the library will solve anything? I remain largely sceptical about the wisdom of arming school staff and it remains a terrible indictment of life in the US but do applaud those having a sincere and wide-reaching conversation about the implications and effects of such policies. I envy them neither the debate nor the possible outcomes.
PS And just before you accuse me of going soft on The Don, let’s not forget that when he visited El Paso in the aftermath of the massacre, he was pictured, with a two-month old baby whose parents were among the twenty two killed, gurning, grinning and giving the Trump-thumbs-up. Never one to miss a photo-opportunity, he had been told the deceased parents were supporters so the president had the baby brought to him at the hospital when the eight injured survivors refused to meet him. These are the deluded, disingenuous actions of the world’s most powerful man.
