Thoughts and prayers can only do so much, but stopping a school shooting after it’s already done is not one of those things. No matter how much politicians make it out to be, mental health issues are not the biggest aspect of shootings and we shouldn’t discount the real problem, which is the amount of guns in this country and the ease of access people have. Gun ownership in general isn’t bad; after all it is a constitutional right, but it’s more about hunting guns, simple rifles and pistols.
The weapons most of these kids have, and most other shooters do as well, are military grade guns and assault weapons. The fact is that these types of weapons shouldn’t be sold so freely or in your average gun shop. Parents need to be held accountable too for putting these in easy to access places where their kids can find it and use it.
Some parents also need to be better at monitoring their children for signs of mental illness or that they might cause a school shooting. For example, the Apalachee High School shooter had already been under suspicion before due to prior threats, and should have been monitored better by his parents. I’ve also noticed that in multiple school shootings, the parents text their kid right before something along the lines of “Don’t do it,” implying that they knew or at least had some sort of suspicion.
According to PBS News, “Annie Brown told the Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on him,”.
It’s extremely irresponsible of parents to be so oblivious to all these things and still let their child go to school and/or not give them the mental help they need.
Even if the sale of guns stopped tomorrow and there were no more being made, gun violence would likely not stop. Guns outnumber Americans, with over 400 million guns and only 345 million people. This means that no matter what, there’s always a way to get a gun. This isn’t even counting the number of guns that are coming to us internationally, primarily at the southern border.
If lawmakers put more effort into passing stricter gun safety laws, if schools provided more resources to help kids who are clearly troubled or bullied, and if parents cared more about the safety of their kid and the harm they could potentially cause, then I believe that school shootings would be much less of a problem in this country. Sadly, we as a society may never get to this point, but we can always keep trying, voting, and making our world a better place as a whole.
