By The Editorial Board
School shootings aren’t a “fact of life.” They are a byproduct of America’s complicity regarding mental illness among students and refusal to take steps toward making schools safer.
After the shooting at a Georgia high school on Sept. 4 which left two students and two teachers dead, many Americans called for long-overdue reform in American schools.
The day after the shooting, Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance described school shootings as a “fact of life.” While Vance’s comment mourned the loss of the victims and called for reform, his version of reform might actually proliferate the issue.
School shootings are not a new issue. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 485 deaths or injuries as a result of school shootings in elementary, secondary and postsecondary institutions between 2000 and 2022. Some sources date the first school shooting back to 1853.
School shootings and gun violence have become terrifyingly normal in the last few years, and even the mention of these incidents brings anxiety. It almost feels like we hear about school shootings more than mass shootings.
No age group is safe, either. The 2007 Virginia Tech University shooting took the lives of 32 people. The shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 took 13 lives. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting killed 27.
Students are tired of feeling unsafe. Looking at popular Generation Z platforms like Instagram and TikTok shows just how fed up students feel unsafe at school, and they have every right to feel that way.
Election coverage makes it seem like the problem is political. At the very least, politicians label their predetermined beliefs as the solution. For many Republicans, it’s militarizing schools. For many Democrats, it’s taking away the threat of guns. Does either side really get to the heart of the issue? Does either side think about the students being affected and what might serve them best? In this political climate, we’re inclined to believe they don’t.
Vance calls for increased security in schools. While the details are murky at the moment, we’ll conjecture about what it might entail. One might imagine fences, perhaps with some barbed wire to prevent accessibility for unauthorized personnel. There might be an elevated post where a security guard can stand watch for anyone suspicious.
Maybe schools will have thicker walls and fewer windows. Perhaps schools can give students IDs they can use to access rooms and provide armed escorts to and from different rooms. It might not be a bad idea to have armed security roving around, as many schools already do. Instead of having schools in populated areas, maybe we can move them to more secluded places where there isn’t much access.
Sound safe? We hope so, because we just roughly described Alcatraz — minus the island. You can bet that no one will get in or out without access.
Forgive us for being a tad dramatic, but the point stands. Treating students like prisoners won’t solve the issue of school shootings. That being said, neither will banning guns.
We’re not sure that guns are the actual issue. It seems that politicians find it much more convenient to solve an easier issue, like giving schools guns to fight back or taking away guns altogether, but the real issue is a much bigger undertaking. One study shows that in 74 of the 151 recorded school shootings between 1982 and 2024, the shooter showed signs of mental health issues prior to the shooting. This statistic tracks with the staggering number of Gen Z Americans who suffer from mental health issues.
The issue is much deeper than many realize, but it’s not unfixable. There is hope that someday, school shootings won’t be considered a “fact of life.” We ask that politicians stop looking for a quick fix and really consider what it might take to address the deeper issue.
As members of Gen Z, we ask that politicians take their eyes off the election and put them on students who are scared to walk into school.
