The inescapable truth is that it can happen here. It can happen anywhere. School shootings in the United States are a scourge from which no community is safe.
According to the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, there were 94 school gun incidents in 2018, by far the most of any year since at least 1970. There also were a record number of deaths, most notably 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Since 20 children ages 6 or 7 were killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, there have been more than 200 school shootings in the United States. That list includes fatal shootings at high schools in Marysville and Rockford in our own state.
All of which points out the importance of the work being done by Alissa Parker and legislators. Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed at Sandy Hook, now lives in Clark County, and she is trying to turn her grief into action through Safe and Sound Schools, a nonprofit organization she formed with other Sandy Hook parents.
That places a focus on Washington this year, with at least five bills related to school safety being considered in the Legislature while following the example of other states. “This is a model that we know works,” Parker told The Columbian. “We’ve seen it succeed in a short period of time.”
Preeminent among the legislation is House Bill 1216, which counts Clark County representatives Paul Harris, Monica Stonier, Brandon Vick and Sharon Wylie among more than 30 co-sponsors. The companion legislation (Senate Bill 5317) is co-sponsored by Annette Cleveland, D-Vancouver.
The bill would require the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to establish a State School Safety Center, along with regional centers at each of the state’s nine educational service districts.
The centers would coordinate information about school safety and work with local law enforcement and mental health providers. Rep. Laurie Dolan, D-Olympia, lead sponsor of the House bill, said, “To me, our biggest goal of 2019 is to put that statewide network in place where even our smallest districts can get the training and staff help.”
Other legislation would focus on school resource officers and guidelines for threat assessments.
Thankfully, none of the bills would clear a path for the arming of teachers, an absurd idea floated by President Donald Trump and others in the wake of last year’s Parkland shooting. Inviting guns into schools would not enhance the safety of students and staff but would diminish it — an assertion that points out the underlying issue behind school shootings.
Following a mass shooting — which occurs nearly once a day in the United States — gun-rights advocates often turn the discussion to mental illness or violent video games. These factors warrant examination, but such suggestions obfuscate the real problem: The United States has far more civilian guns than any nation in the world. According to Small Arms Survey, a research project based in Switzerland, the United States has 120 firearms per 100 people; Yemen is next with 53 guns per 100 people.
Meanwhile, other nations have people who suffer from mental illness or play violent video games, but the United States is the only country where mass shootings are a common occurrence. Until this nation admits the root cause of gun violence, needless deaths will continue with appalling frequency.
That, however, is beyond the purview of this year’s Legislature. Instead, we can only hope that lawmakers do everything they can to keep school shootings from happening here.
