by Will Marshall
Americans traditionally have regarded public education as a formative institution integral to the success of democratic self-government. That’s why we’ve made it compulsory: By law, parents must send their children to public or accredited private schools, though exceptions are sometimes made for home schooling.
But if our government is going to require parents to send their kids to school, our elected representatives surely have a basic responsibility to ensure those schools are safe. The ghastly murder of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas tells us they’re failing in that duty.
According to The Washington Post, there have been 24 acts of gun violence in U.S. schools this year alone, which have claimed 28 lives. America is saturated in guns and an attendant epidemic of mass murder is spilling over into schools.
No one wants our schools to look or feel like fortresses or maximum-security prisons. In an open and free society, there is no such thing as 100 percent security.
But there are plenty of sensible steps U.S. leaders can take to make schools and other public places safer and mass shootings rarer. They just won’t take them.
“Why are we willing to live with this carnage,” an anguished President Biden asked. “Why do we keep letting this happen?”
They are the right questions, and the answer is obvious: Because of the Republican Party’s dogmatic opposition to common sense gun safety measures. It grows out of the right’s paranoiac and absolutist view that any limits on gun ownership and use will necessarily lead to extinguishing American liberty.
This is patently false, as a quick survey of how Great Britain, New Zealand and other free and democratic countries contain gun violence shows. But then today’s Trumpified GOP — steeped in a miasma of lies, conspiracy theories and tribal hatred — evidently is incapable of rationally discussing gun safety.
Despite mass shootings in Texas in 2019 and 2019, the Republican-controlled legislature has relaxed gun laws in each of its last two sessions, including passage of a law in 2021 allowing people to carry guns without a permit. Predictably, Texas Republicans are again calling for “hardening” schools, hiring more armed guards, and more resources for mental health — anything but making it harder for aspiring killers to get military weapons.
A modest step toward sanity would be to bar sales of assault weapons to anyone under 21. There’s no earthly reason why adolescent males — the suspects in both the Robb Elementary massacre and the recent attack in a Buffalo grocery store that killed ten Black shoppers were just 18 — should have easy access to war weapons.
Just as raising the legal drinking age to 21 did not usher in a return to Prohibition, keeping assault rifles out of the hands of impulsive teenagers won’t abrogate the Second Amendment. Why do Republicans apply a rigid absolutism only to gun rights?
After this week’s horrific display of human depravity in Texas, are Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans willing to take even this small step toward gun safety? Don’t bet the ranch — today’s Republicans can be counted on to put the inviolable rights of gun owners above protecting America’s children every time.
Looking ahead to the midterm elections, Democrats should make sure voters understand that GOP rhetoric about guaranteeing “parental rights” in education doesn’t include the right to safer schools for their kids.
Will Marshall is the President and Founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.
