New safety precautions at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High include clear plastic backpacks, mandatory ID lanyards, searches and police at every entrance, and mazes of waist-high barricades. The school is also considering the use of metal-detecting during searches. These precautions are kind of like putting a Band-Aid on a severed limb or a cancer patient. Student Alex Wind puts it best:
If we had clear backpacks the entire year, the only thing about February 14th that would’ve gone differently is that we would have had clear backpacks.
— Alex Wind (@al3xw1nd) April 4, 2018
However, it’s hard to blame the school district. The American government is doing as much as possible to do as little as possible about gun control. It took 58 deaths due to a bump stock in Las Vegas and public pressure after the latest shooting for legislators to push for a national ban on bump stocks. Other than that and an increase in the minimum age required to buy a gun in Florida (which triggered a lawsuit from the National Rifle Association), nothing has changed. Its easy to see how the MSD school district has its hands tied: if the problem is being ignored at a federal level, how are individual school districts supposed to protect their students?
If anything, the new security measures should serve as a wake-up call. We’re okay with treating high schoolers as criminals to create the illusion of safety, but we refuse to do anything about the actual problem. It gets old seeing the same half-dozen tired arguments against gun control being circulated, as if their perpetrators are just trying to convince themselves that there’s more to it than the millions of dollars and political influence with which the NRA bribes politicians, both directly and indirectly.
Clear backpacks and metal cattle mazes aren’t going to stop a shooter. The inability to own a gun is going to stop a shooter. Our government has failed, so it is our responsibility to take the first step to sensible gun control: voting out anyone who takes bribes from the NRA. It's painfully obvious that legislators are not acting in the public interest (source):
- 75% of Americans think gun laws should be more strict
- 94% support universal background checks (92% support adding those with mental illnesses to the background check system)
- 82% support raising the minimum age required to buy a gun to 21
- 81% support a ban on bump stocks
- 73% support a ban on magazines larger than 10 rounds
- 73% support a ban on assault rifles
The absence of change after every mass shooting does not reflect these numbers. If our representatives were truly acting in the public interest, all these policies would have been enacted by now (preferably immediately after the slaughter of six- and seven-year-olds at Sandy Hook, but better late than never). Instead, we get thoughts and prayers, clear backpacks, and a President who decided to ban bump stocks after getting the go-ahead from the NRA and blaming children for their own murders.
However, our situation is not hopeless. The MSD shooting broke the template. Its prevalence in the news has outlasted the usual one-or-two-week buzz that normally accompanies a shooting, entirely because of the refusal of the students involved to be ignored. These students have endured relentless bullying from politicians, NRA representatives and media figureheads, and yet they refuse to be silenced. We have a chance to make a difference—a chance to break the cycle. A chance to say “Clear backpacks are not enough.” Don’t let it be wasted.