Most conversations with my 9th-grade daughter begin with her asking — did you know…? Recently she asked did you know that before you can leave the school building when the fire alarm is going off they have to check the halls to be sure that the alarm was not pulled by someone with a gun whose goal is to get everyone into the halls so they can shoot more people?
I did NOT know that.
But it makes sense following the events of the Florida school shooting five years ago.
Last year school shootings reached an unprecedented high — and yet we still offer only thoughts and prayers,1 sweeping policy changes have failed, gun ownership is glorified, and the solution to violence at school is to teach students and teachers to barricade themselves into rooms and not to enter the hall (to exit the building) while the fire alarm is blaring until it is confirmed that the alarm was not pulled by someone with a gun.
As a parent, I feel it is important that we demand policy & change.
Firearms are the leading cause of death in children and adolescents.2
As I watched the news coverage from Tennesee yesterday, I was reminded of a senior thesis one of my exceptional students3 completed years ago.
In the thesis, he included this quote —
“The regularity of mass killings breeds familiarity. The rhythms of grief and outrage that accompany them become—for those not directly affected by tragedy—ritualised and then blend into the background noise. That normalisation makes it ever less likely that America's political system will groan into action to take steps to reduce their frequency or deadliness.” ~ The Latest American Mass Killing (2015)
As an epidemiologist, I join with a multitude of public health professionals who are declaring that —
“Gun violence is an epidemic.”
We need to recognize that gun violence is public health emergency. And it is threatening the lives of our children, as well as their mental and emotional health.
Change is needed.
Asking our children to learn how to build barricades and to not leave a building during a fire alarm until the all-clear, the no-gunman signal is given is a form of tertiary prevention — in public health and medicine, tertiary prevention is our last resort. It means that we were unable to prevent harm/disease before it occurred (primary prevention). We were unable to identify/screen for harm/disease once it occurred to minimize the effects it would have on an individual (secondary prevention). And we are resorting to tertiary prevention, which means we are doing everything possible to make a really bad health/safety situation to be as safe and healthy as it can be, given that harm has already been done and all other forms of prevention have failed.
We need primary prevention; we need to prevent gun violence before it occurs.
Primary prevention — ensuring that gunmen do not enter school buildings, ensuring semi-automatic guns cannot be purchased, ensuring that background checks and gun safety are par for the course across the country — must be our goal. Public health is declaring gun violence to be an epidemic. We want new policies and change. And we stand behind Vice President Harris, who recently said —
“As a nation, we must have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and fight for sensible gun safety laws to ensure nothing like this happens again.”
We need to protect our children, first. Not our right to own a gun.
In a world where political divides are wide and our views are polarized, it is hard to imagine a path forward. But I would challenge each of us to think about what gun reform could actually mean.
It doesn’t have to involve amending the Bill of Rights.
Instead, groups like Everytown for Gun Safety are proposing a reform that would not take guns away but would prevent tragedies from occurring. These steps include — background checks before all gun sales (there are too many loopholes that allow for guns to legally get into the hands of dangerous individuals), prohibiting people with dangerous histories from being able to obtain a gun, and repealing gun industry immunity.
This is NOT about maintaining your right to own a gun. This is about prevention.
This is about saving human lives.
The time for just our thoughts and prayers has long passed. It is time for action.
Join me — do not be quiet. Vote for candidates that want to control gun sales and prevent mass shootings. Donate to groups like Everytown. Reach out to me — let’s put our heads together and think about what needs to be done locally.
We need to prevent gun violence —
our children’s lives demand that we take action today.
NOTE: the article cited here that argues that thoughts and prayers are not enough is from 2015. In the piece (from The Guardian), they reported that President Obama had to give the same speed nine times in six years following tragic mass shootings (most of which involved children). In 2015, President Obama stated, “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief we should feel, and it does nothing to prevent this carnage being repeated somewhere else in America.”
THE SAME IS TRUE TODAY.
Take a look at this — guns kill more kids than cancer, car crashes, drug overdoses, and drowning. This is NOT okay.
Shout out to G. Devenney, who is currently working at the highest level of government to create healthy communities and is the mastermind and author of the study, Indirect Community Repercussions of Gun Violence: A Retrospective Cohort Study to Determine the Effect of Mass Shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2002 on the Birth Weight of Newborns.
Thank you, Becki. Your commentary is much
appreciated. Plus NOBODY needs to own
an assault weapon.