Op-ed: The price we must pay to protect our kids from the proliferation of guns

Bullets guns proliferation

Photo by Jay Rembert for Unsplash.

By Bill Dunkel

The U.S. spends $1.73 trillion a year for national defense, but we cannot protect our children from being shot in school. The carnage at Covenant School in Nashville — the 13th school shooting this year — proves again that all children are vulnerable to this madness.

Twenty years ago, the gun industry began to aggressively market assault style weapons, particularly the AR-15, which became a cash cow. Today 1 in every 4 guns made in the United States is an AR-15. Although it’s designed to rapidly inflict mass casualties in combat, almost anybody can easily get one. The Nashville shooter, despite being treated for an emotional disorder, had seven legally purchased weapons, including an assault rifle she used to kill three adults and three 9-year-olds.

Thanks to our lax attitude toward firearms, gun-makers have enjoyed record breaking profits and shootings have become the leading cause of death among American children and teens.

Gun advocacy groups, like the NRA, know where their bread is buttered. They have systematically sold an extreme, warped interpretation of the Second Amendment to the American people because common sense gun control would hurt their bottom line.

Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA, has an estimated net worth of $20 million and flies his family around in private jets. Politicians, mostly conservative Republicans, benefit from NRA campaign contributions and lobbying efforts on their behalf. This unholy alliance has blocked Congress from taking meaningful action to protect the nation’s children, despite the fact that polls show the majority of the American people want something to be done.

During the 1960s massive protests, marches and acts of peaceful civil disobedience, often led by students, helped end the Vietnam War and galvanize support for key Civil Rights legislation. The American public needs to become similarly aroused today, and there are signs that it’s happening.

Last January, Students Demand Action engaged in protests at the National Shooting Sports Foundation trade show in Las Vegas. A few weeks ago, a thousand students and teachers in Denver left school, walked to the statehouse and demanded action for gun safety after one of their classmates was gunned down. We need more direct action like this – a lot more.

Sadly, things have devolved to the point where we also need police or trained security professionals (not civilian vigilantes or overworked teachers) on guard at every school in the nation, Pre-K through high school. (Most colleges already have
campus police).

Even if we succeed in banning future sales of the most lethal weapons, there already are so many in circulation that some inevitably will fall into the hands of deranged, would-be mass shooters. Yes, it will cost a lot of money to provide this level of professional protection for our children. Maybe we need to cancel an aircraft carrier or get by with fewer F-35s at $135 million apiece. This is the price we need to pay for handing out guns like Halloween candy to anybody who wants one.

Bill Dunkel is a retired educator and Windham resident.

Op-ed views are the opinions of those who wrote them and may or may not express the views of the editor.

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