The gun
lobby and gun rights advocates often claim that increasing gun rights makes
Americans more free. Nothing can be
further from the truth. Yes, permissive
gun laws increase the freedom of the minority (30%) of adults who are gun
owners to purchase virtually any weapon they choose. However, increasing the availability of
firearms erodes our freedoms–including those of gun owners and their
families–in a number of ways.
There is
significant evidence showing that higher gun ownership levels, more gun
carrying, and increasing the presence of guns in homes tend to make people less
safe. While guns are sometimes used for
self-protection, they are used far more often in crime, against domestic
partners, in suicides, and in unintentional injuries and fatalities. It follows that lowering gun ownership and gun
carrying will save lives and prevent injuries, thereby sparing many Americans
from the loss of life and the unimaginable injuries and horrors associated with
losing or caring for a loved one who has been shot.
More
Americans are reporting being mindful of the dangers of being shot when entering
shopping malls, houses of worship, theaters and entertainment districts, night
clubs and other crowded places. Such
fear is certainly not freedom. Nor is
the fear of students who are often terrified to go to school. An American Psychological Association survey
has found that the fear of being caught in a school shooting is at the top of
the list of stressors for students between the ages of 15 and 21. Freedom is not the term that comes to mind
when we think of K-12 students participating in active shooter drills and
cowering in classroom corners and under desks.
In
response to school shootings, states like Florida with especially influential
gun lobbies prefer to do anything but address the widespread availability of
guns and assault-style weapons. They
want to focus on arming teachers and school staff, turning school properties
into high security prison-like settings, conducting drills, and focusing on mental
health despite the fact that most school shooters do not have a serious mental
illness. The militarization of schools
represents the antithesis of freedom for students and school staff.
Requiring
or incentivizing teachers and school staff to carry guns is dangerous and will
cost lives rather than free people from gun violence. Active shooters are almost never taken down
by armed civilians but putting arms in the hands of improperly trained
individuals will lead to fatal shootings within the school, thefts of guns,
accidental shootings, and other misuses.
It forces talented teachers out of education and interferes with the
right of students to have the best education possible. Teachers, students, and administrators alike
oppose the practice and, yet, the gun lobby is pressing to arm teachers since
Wayne LaPierre of the NRA famously stated: “The only way to stop a bad guy with
a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
The
militarization of schools through arming teachers and active shooter drills provide
constant reminders to students of the dangers of an active shooter. Rather than freedom, this is a constant
distraction from their studies. At the
college level, allowing guns on campus seems counterproductive as universities
have consistently been shown to be safer than the surrounding community. Why import the community’s problems onto
campuses?
Two years
ago, three University of Texas at Austin professors filed a lawsuit against the
stateAttorney General and several officials at the
university over a 2015 law allowing concealed handguns on college campuses. The
professors argued the law infringed their First Amendment right to academic
freedom, saying the carrying of guns into classrooms created a “chilling
effect” on freedom of expression. As a former criminology professor, I would
imagine that the free-wheeling discussions we had on such controversial topics
as abortion, sexual assault, and race and justice, would have been far more
subdued or would not have been broached at all had students been “packing.”
The most
extreme manifestation of how individuals wielding guns can deprive others of
their First Amendment rights are displays of menacing behavior by gun rights
activists aimed at groups who are engaging in activism to bring about gun law
reform. Armed groups such as Open Carry
Texas and the Utah Gun Exchange have bullied and threatened individuals
organizing voluntary gun buybacks and have stalked activist students seeking
changes in gun laws as they made their way around the country.
Finally, a
shocking example of how the gun violence epidemic can lead to an erosion of our
freedoms is shown by a Senate Republican bill that would tackle mass and school
shootings through the enhanced monitoring
of students’ communications. Rather than
addressing the roots of the despair that lead young people to commit school
shootings and their easy access to weapons capable of mass slaughter, the GOP,
a party historically concerned about invasions of privacy, recently filed a bill
that would dig deeply into the online activities of students.
The legislation would require federally
funded schools to install software to surveil students’ online activities,
potentially including their emails and searches, in order to identify “violent”
or alarming content. Education groups
say that such intensification of social media and network surveillance can
discourage children from expressing themselves online. Social media monitoring has already increased
dramatically in response to gun violence.
The Brennan Center for Justice notes that, from 2013 to 2018, the number
of school districts across the country that purchased social media monitoring
software increased from six to 63.
Schools are being inundated with
alerts, with some receiving over a hundred a day. The technology does not merely monitor
student activity during the school day but operates 24/7, monitoring school
email accounts, web searches, and, in some cases, students’ public social media
accounts as well.
The
jury is still out in terms of the impact of this dramatic escalation in student
monitoring. There is a significant
concern that student communications may be misinterpreted due to student
cultural differences and casual conversations that may be mistakenly viewed as
threats by the software employed, potentially exposing a much wider pool of
students to the attention of law enforcement.
While
some monitoring of student activities may be desirable, there is a difference
between encouraging young people to come forward if they witness threatening
behaviors or statements and the routine, around-the-clock electronic
surveillance of young people that will often misinterpret loose talk of kids as
a threat and bring some form of heavy-handed response. Ultimately, the latter will lead kids to be
more secretive and find ways to communicate with their peers that will
circumvent the monitoring. Surveillance
may be politically more palatable than dealing with the alienation and trauma
experienced by young people, as well as the enactment of effective gun
laws. However, such monitoring does
nothing to address the social, psychological, and familial factors that lead
young people to commit horrific acts. To
the extent that we persist in ignoring the reasons for the carnage we are
seeing, we will continue to fail to free our kids and society from the
ever-present threat of gun violence.
Thomas
Gabor, Ph.D. is a criminologist and author of ENOUGH! Solving America’s Gun Violence Crisis (thomasgaborbooks.com)
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