Is Your Child’s School a Target for a Mass Shooting?

Here are ten questions to think about when considering the safety of your child’s school. It’s more than possible that the political environment is making schools targets while preventing politicians to offer greater solutions than thoughts and prayers.

1. Have politicians in your state claimed that schools have become grooming sites or centers for indoctrination? That’s the sort of thing that could trigger a shooter to come in and clean things up. The repetition of these messages on Fox News and elsewhere isn’t making your kids safer, it’s putting them in harm’s way.
2. Have your school board meetings turned into shouting matches about the imagined teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) which isn’t really happening? When your school’s teachers and principal have been accused of making your kids feel bad. That’s one more thing that could set off a teacher.
3. Has your child’s school recently fired a teacher for posting a video of empty library shelves while your school figures out which books to ban? Denying the First Amendment to anyone, to the point where it costs them their vocation and income is enough to incite violence
4. Are your teachers working under the constant fear of being fired because they might violate vague and unconstitutional laws? Think of the stress of trying to read the mind of politicians like Ron DeSantis and what he might deem outside of the “Western values” he wants to be promoted.
5. Does your school ignore the bullying of LGBTQ students, girls, boys, non-athletes, or racial minorities? Bullying is real, it was the reason behind the Columbine shooting that started it all. There is a cost for ignoring it, do so at your own peril.
6. Has your school become part of the school-to-prison pipeline? School resource officers that arrest students and send them to jail should be the final recourse, not the first step. If your child’s school invests more in paying police officers than mental health counselors, you might have a problem.
7. Has your school ignored the molestation of children by the staff including teachers and administrators? Transferring a problem or allowing them to resign without a blemish on their record is not a solution. It’s merely sending the problem somewhere else where it’s certain to happen again.
8. Is your school a public school, private school, or religious school? There are a whole lot more public schools than private ones and the vast majority of school shootings happen in public schools. Private schools may have more resources like metal detectors and guards. Studies have shown they have fewer fights and threats of violence because of the perceived greater ramifications of being expelled. Don’t assume sending a child to public school makes them exempt. The Nashville shooting was at a private Christian school and was carried out by a former student.
9. Does your state allow “red flag” laws permitting the temporary removal of guns from people deemed unstable and do they fund any such programs? We all know that some people don’t need access to guns. If your state makes no provision to block them, a mass shooting is a logical occurrence.
10. Have your representatives in Congress and the Senate offered up any solutions other than “thoughts and prayers” or having more guns in schools? A lot of times, solutions aren’t clear and reasonable people can disagree. In no world will background checks and preventing unstable people from having guns not reduce mass shootings.

In no world will reducing the ability of citizens to kill more people faster not reduce deaths. Pretending AR-15s or other assault weapons are needed for hunting or collecting is just stupid. Until the deer start shooting back, other weapons will certainly do. America isn’t yet serious about stopping school shootings. People imagine that a single event like Sandy Hook where enough children died that politicians had to pay attention but that’s been proven wrong. Instead, some people promoted the lie that it never happened and that actors portrayed the victims. I don’t know which is worse, people like Alex Jones who promoted the idea, or the fools that believed it.

We either want to do something to address mass shootings, especially in schools, or we don’t. When certain media is telling you schools are ruining our kids, they are putting targets on those schools’ backs. When politicians tell you schools are grooming your kids or some children are negatively influencing yours, what could go wrong? It’s time to stop the madness, not just wish it away.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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