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Academic

: Essentially Contested America

The Continuing Tragedy of Gun Violence in American Schools

By Robert Justin Lipkin

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Yesterday's shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University should bring to focus the consequences of allowing millions of guns to blot the American landscape. But yesterday's shootings were not isolated or unique, not even within the past week: "On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical niu:

College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead." Predictably, the gun lobby is bound to inundate the airwaves and Internet with the reckless argument that the way to deal with these tragedies is for students to be armed. Of course, this position ignores the obvious fact that arming significant numbers of students will bring about an increase in death and injury. But until the nation, as a whole, realizes the gun lobby's argument for it is, namely, an attempt to make even stronger, wealthier, and more influential an industry that is, in part, responsible for the carnage in American schools, the argument to arm students will unfortunately persuade some. A better course would be to eliminate, consistent constitutional requirements, the overwhelming abundance of guns in American society. Security at the nation's universities will never be complete. But reducing the availability of guns will prevent intruders from entering classrooms with instruments of immediate and easy death. How much more death and injury has to occur before we will come to out senses? For more click here.

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Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on February 15, 2008 (boomark / email).