We Choose to Allow School Mass Shootings
And our schools' students, teachers, staff, and administrators deserve better
As others have observed, talking about how to stop a mass shooting in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t ‘too soon.’ It’s much too late. - Ezra Klein
Yet again we have another mass shooting in a U.S. school. The 218th school shooting (as I write this) to have occurred in 2024 where a gun was fired or brandished at a school. Forty-nine people have been killed or injured this year so far. In this latest school mass shooting in Georgia, the lives of two students and two teachers were violently ended. Nine more other people wounded and hospitalized. At the hands of a 14 year old kid; a 14 year-old kid with an AR 15-style rifle.
All because society refuses to address a primary contributor to gun violence; refuses to address the absurd quantity of, and easy access to, guns in our nation, many of which have no business being found outside of a battlefield.
No, not society. Republicans. And the gun industry. And the NRA. And increasingly the growing security industry.
The negative impact this has on public education is significant. School districts must divert limited resources to address the potential threat of a mass shooter. Limited funds available for building new school facilities, implementing major renovations, and/or addressing deferred maintenance items are further limited by having to devote a portion of these dollars to harden school facilities. Even if some of this funding comes from state education dollars devoted to safety and security, that’s less state funding overall available for other areas arguably more relevant to the primary mission of public education.
This can also reduce a facility’s ability to positively impact learning and general health/wellness (via the dollars taken away for security measures as well as the conflicting goals of a hardened facility vs a facility that is welcoming, fosters learning, and connects to the natural world - see images below). And frankly, the effectiveness of many of these facility and technological measures is unproven (even as the fear of mass shootings is contributing to the growth of the security industry).
I’ve written about this before:
The Lessons Learned for School Design Shouldn't Come From Trench Warfare
Designing for School Safety – Don’t Forget the Elephant in the Classroom
Biophilia, School Security, and the AEC Industry’s Role in Addressing Gun Violence
In addition to modifications of the physical environment and addition of security tech, staffing resources at the building and district level must be devoted to security issues related to mass shootings (developing, implementing, and overseeing security plans, establishing crisis response teams, performing threat assessments, increasing the number of school resource officers, etc.), sucking up more time and dollars. Teachers (as well as students) must learn and practice what to do in the event of a mass shooting, taking away from teaching and learning. And as these recommendations periodically change, districts must also devote further time and resources to update facilities and procedures, and conduct new training.
Perhaps worst of all is the stress and anxiety created for students, teachers, administrators, board members, and parents as they divert their own limited mental and emotional resources to worrying about, and preparing for, the threat of a mass shooter. This has a psychological toll in and of itself (particularly active shooter drills).
For a former teacher’s perspective on this, take a look at
’s recent substack piece: We Don't Have to Get Over It. Her description of a training exercise, quoted below, should give you pause if you’ve never thought about this before:I then saw smoke coming from the hallway into my classroom. As I watched the smoke gather and slither across the floor, over the linoleum and up the back of the door, I heard two loud bangs. Again, I wasn’t ready, and I yelled, “shit!” involuntarily.
The screaming was at my door by that time. A woman was trying to open my door and begging to be let in. She sounded like a frantic child. The trainer had warned us not to let anyone in.
Another loud bang and they were gone. On to the next classroom. On to traumatize the next educator.
As quickly as it started, it was over. Tears streamed down my face and I know this: I didn’t learn much that day to protect my kids. I still didn’t have an answer about specifics on what I should do in a real event, but I did learn that these training sessions will leave a mark long after they are conducted.
As it is, we don’t pay teachers enough just to teach our kids. We sure as hell don’t pay them enough to throw their bodies in-between our kids and a mass shooter, or even put up with this kind of training. They aren’t the secret service.
And for students, a study from 2020 found that experiencing an active shooter drill in high school was associated with significant increases in student fear, inflated perceptions of risk, and a decrease in perceptions of school safety.
Here’s what one senior (at the time) in 2022 expressed after the Uvalde, TX mass shooting about her own fear and anxiety:
I am terrified to go to school. I worry about school shootings, like the one in Texas, and I worry about everyday gun violence, which killed 562 people in Philadelphia last year. Both epidemics have given me another perspective on America. It is not the safe place I imagined. In my old West Philadelphia neighborhood, I would hear gunshots every day. Sometimes I’m scared to walk down the street or take public transportation. Today, I’m scared to sit in my classroom.
The frustration of having to devote so many resources to this (when public education isn’t adequately funded to begin with), as well as the fear of having it happen in my community’s school district, is something I experienced first hand when I served as a school board member not that long ago. The very rare report of a gun accidentally being brought to school, the occasional incidents of fights, the threats of gun violence made on social media, the occasional reports of doors remaining unlocked when they should be locked - these would result in a momentary spike of anxiety and continue to gnaw at me afterwards. And the recognition that the most effective security measure standing in the way of an individual with an AR 15-style rifle, hell bent on killing as many people as possible, was likely simple statistics - well, that sometimes would keep me up at night.
I also worried about the impacts living in this reality was having on our community’s students, including my own kids who were in school at the time. When my wife and I had discussions with them regarding the various security drills they went through, we could hear the resignation in their voices as they shared their low opinions of the effectiveness of such measures.
I previously wrote about one of the the worst moments I’ve experienced as a parent when I received a text from my then 16-year old:
“We just went through a soft lockdown. [Several second pause as the next text comes through.] But everything’s good now.” I had just slid into my driver seat, ready to head home from the office when my phone buzzed with this text from my sixteen-year-old. They were at the FIRST Robotics Competition Heartland Regional being held at the MCC Business & Technology Campus in Kansas City, MO. Apparently an armed individual at another location on campus triggered the lockdown, but fortunately no one was hurt. I sat there behind the wheel with the car door still open, awash in a mix of worry, fear and relief. And anger. Anger and frustration at our inability to collectively address gun violence.
But the real gut punch came a few weeks later when they texted me the following Pearls Before Swine comic during the middle of the school day. No explanation, just the comic.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt more of a failure as a citizen, school board member, or parent than I did in that moment.
But as helpless as we may feel at times, we must keep fighting. In the words of Shyamala Gopalan Harris, mother of current Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Don’t sit around and complain about things. Do something. And we already know much of what we need to do, or at least where we need to start.
listed a few of them in the post I linked to above. These include universal background checks, safe storage laws, and red flag laws, all of which Mom’s Demand Action, Students Demand Action, EveryTown For Gun Safety, Brady (United Against Gun Violence), Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, and other organizations are working to get implemented. A few other measures include preventing gun trafficking, repealing restrictions on gun trace data, and of course prohibiting assault-style weapons, bump stocks, and high capacity magazines. Plus enabling gun buy back programs.And definitely DON’T arm teachers. Again, they’re not secret service agents.
We certainly need to continue researching this, but the data we do have indicates these are all good places to start (contrary to the mythic good guy with a gun narrative spread by many Republicans, gun manufacturers, and the NRA - all of whom over the years have spent significant effort to block and otherwise undermine research on gun violence and gun control, to their own benefit). A lot of the existing research can be accessed through the organizations listed above. Several of the articles and resources linked to above also have links to overviews and primary sources. And here are a few other overviews, links to primary resources, and guides:
Yes, there are nuances to how legislation and associated policies should be written and implemented - variations by region and rural vs suburban vs urban. The implementations need to be studied and modified based on what’s learned. The history of institutional racism in this country further complicates this. But it’s past time to begin addressing the elephant in the room - the more guns there are and the more powerful and deadly they are, the more gun violence and gun deaths there inevitably will be.
You can, however, start doing something by getting involved with the organizations listed above, contacting your elected officials, talking to family, friends, and neighbors, and supporting politicians who will fight for gun control and gun safety legislation. And while you may come across the odd Republican politician who supports some degree of gun control legislation as well as their local public schools, at this point if you want to see action taken, you really need to vote Democrat up and down the ticket. Though, by all means, verify this with the candidates you’re selecting from.
Generally, though, Republicans at all levels of government have crassly weaponized the issues of gun control and gun violence to further attack public education.
In response to the Georgia shooting, JD Vance, when delivering remarks, spouted the typical Republican line of thoughts and prayers. But he also attempted to normalize such school shootings by calling them a fact of life. He also called for more hardening of our schools and stated, in opposition to some of the research findings and recommendations, that gun restrictions wouldn’t be effective in preventing school shootings.
Note that when Republicans call for more hardening of schools, for more security, they also tend to downplay or ignore the additional funding and staffing needed to support such undertakings (let alone the negative psychological and teaching / learning impacts the threat of gun violence and mass shootings have). These become unfunded mandates and are another way Republicans and anti-public education advocates attack public education.
Such a strategy is in line with Project 2025’s (and many Republican and anti-public education advocates) ultimate goal of weakening public education (if not outright eliminating it). The plan currently intends to … phase out the $16 billion Title I funding program over the next 10 years, convert the $13 billion IDEA program for students with disabilities to block grants or a private school choice offering, and eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. This would likely … shutter thousands of public schools, end supports for low-income students, divert taxpayer funds to the private education of wealthy students and, ultimately, destabilize public education altogether. Unfunded school hardening mandates with potentially limited success in stopping school shootings that don’t address, and may increase in some cases, the mental and emotional stress of students and teachers is right in line with the goals of Project 2025.
Trump himself has previously stated with regards to school shootings that we just have to get over it - we have to move forward. Again, this is an attempt to normalize school shootings, maintaining it as a burden to public school districts.
At the state level, in Kansas where I live, over the years our Republican controlled legislature along with past Republican governors have weakened and repealed gun control laws while expanding gun rights. That includes allowing 18- to 20-year-olds to carry concealed, loaded handguns in public without a permit, including on college and university campuses. Legislation proposed this last session (that died in committee, for now) attempted to amend the Kansas Bill of Rights to place possession and use of ammunition, firearm accessories and firearm components under constitutional protection, essentially giving gun rights the same state constitutional protection as freedom of speech and religion. At a hearing on this bill, our current notorious MAGA attorney general, Kris Kobach, even radically stated that the ATF is a threat to the second amendment.
Kansas doesn’t currently have legislation encouraging or requiring teachers be armed in the classroom, though such bills have been proposed in the past, and some Republicans continue to talk about it. I expect such conversations and proposed legislation will continue to occur in the statehouse, especially if Republicans maintain their supermajority. We do allow school employees (other than school resource officers) to carry guns on a pk-12 campus if they have a concealed carry permit (and have been given permission from school / district authority).
But perhaps more insidious (in part because of bi-partisan support) is legislation from this last session that would have helped expand the school security industrial complex without addressing the root problem. Senate bill 387 essentially made a dollar for dollar match to districts (that would come out of dedicated state school safety / security funds) for the implementation of certain AI-based security measures as part of a school hardening effort contingent on the use of a specific vendor. Our Democratic governor, however, line-item vetoed this language, while still keeping the dedicated safety / security funds available to districts.
Setting aside the sweet deal for this specific vendor and the general untested nature of such solutions for actually preventing gun violence in schools, focusing on such measures (and dedicating state dollars to school hardening that could have been used for other aspects of public education) without addressing the root problems normalizes gun violence within our schools. Especially in our larger environment of lax gun control laws and expanded gun rights. Given their current super minority status with limited levers to pull, it could be understandable why some Democrats may have chosen to support this as part of some form of political reciprocity. But it’s also a capitulation to our absurd culture of the gun.
And it betrays our public school students, teachers, staff, and administrators.
We do have to do something. And there are a lot of somethings to do to equitably make our schools safe, healthy, and effective learning environments. Right now, for all of us, that should start with supporting and voting for candidates who will fight for gun control legislation as well as public education.
Let’s stop being too late in doing what needs to be done.