School shootings in America have proliferated. In response, individuals and for-profit companies have developed a plethora of products aimed [pun intended] at reducing the carnage. Are they necessary? Do they work? If one of them saves a life, it may turn out to have been a worthwhile purchase, whatever the price. But I can’t help thinking that these defensive approaches, while well intentioned, and perhaps effective in some instances, miss the point. It’s clear that in 2019 America, creative minds, inventive marketers and politicians call themselves ready to address everything about gun violence—everything, that is, but the guns.

Instead of focusing on reducing the number of guns in circulation and enacting stricter laws for owning guns, this is what passes for protecting students from school shootings. Do we really have to live this way?

Stop the bleed

Stop the Bleed is a national awareness campaign intended to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. Through the program, healthcare professionals teach effective blood-stopping techniques to teachers, parents, students and members of the general public. [I’m not saying this is a bad idea; I’m just saying that it’s very sad that there’s a need for it.]

Bulletproof hoodies

A woman whose neighbor was shot and killed in an attempted robbery has started a company that makes bulletproof hoodies to keep people of all ages safe. The California company, Wonder Hoodie, now produces the bulletproof protection in smaller sizes for young children and teens in response to the rash of school shootings.

Bullet-resistant classroom blankets

Vox describes Door Shield is a panel of “soft armor” — used as cover by police SWAT teams when they raid buildings and exchange gunfire. You nail the shield to a classroom door. If a shooter breaks into the school, teachers lock the door, and with one hard tug on a canvas strap, you release the bullet-resistant panel, which rolls down and covers the door. “Even a child can operate it,” claims the manufacturer. The list price per blanket is $1,995—pretty pricey for a school with lots of doors. The manufacturer says, “It’s cost versus value: the cost of [Door Shield] versus the value of a life.”

PepperBall

Billed as a solution for “schools that don’t want teachers to carry guns,” the PepperBall launcher is a flashlight-shaped weapon that shoots bullets filled with pepper spray. Originally, it was marketed to campers and truck drivers, who wanted non-lethal weapons to carry on the road. After the shootings at Parkland, the manufacturer saw teachers as an additional market for the product.

Bullet resistant backpacks

The manufacturer calls its armor-plated backpacks, “the backpack that will save your life.” They retail for between $150 and $500. Originally aimed at law-enforcement personnel, after a recent school shooting, the manufacturer began designing a kid-sized version.

Rocks, bats and hockey pucks

While they’re not high-tech inventions, in the category of “Whose Brilliant Idea Was This,” are the primitive weapons that some school administrators have put in classrooms for kids to use in case a shooter shows up. Oakland University in Michigan gave out 3,500 hockey pucks to faculty members and students in November 2018 to throw at a gunman. Since 2016, a Pennsylvania school district has kept 5-gallon buckets of river rocks in classrooms. “If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks. And they will be stoned,” David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, has said. Finally, Millcreek Township School District Superintendent William Hall wanted to show that safety policies had changed from hiding from a shooter to running, fighting, and surviving. So he distributed 600 mini baseball bats, and encouraged staff to keep one in every classroom of the Pennsylvania district’s 11 schools.

Fear sells. Gun laws, apparently, do not.

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During my freshman year in college, my professor for “Political Ideologies” class made a pretty bold claim: “In the next fifty years,” he intoned, “we will see the rise of a major fascist movement in the United States.” It’s not as outlandish as it sounds.

Usually, I am opposed to the use of the word fascism, because, as George Orwell notes, the term has such a nebulous meaning. Fascism is used synonymously with “big government,” “repression,” etc. I was chagrined to no end when the right compared Obama to Hitler in 2008 and onward. But what fascism means in this context is a virulently racist, pro-corporate, and violent right-wing extremism. And I believe that the recent right-wing violence against perceived national enemies is a prelude to this kind of ideology.

Ideology is a result of crisis, political scientists Terence Ball and Richard Dagger tell us. In Germany and Italy, this crisis came in the form of a loss, and tepid victory, respectively, in the First World War. The loss of national fortunes called for a rebirth and revitalization. This regeneration first took the form of lashing out against those the far-right in Germany and Italy considered responsible for republican decadence: socialists, communists, pacifists, Jews, democrats of all stripes. In Germany, during the failed communist revolution of 1918, far-right militias called freikorps “roamed the countryside, killing with impunity”.

What is our crisis? Certainly the crisis of 2008 qualifies. And who are our freikorps, our street-fighters? We are seeing their rise as a reaction to social justice movements like Black Lives Matter. In the past several days alone, we’ve seen five people shot by white supremacists at a Minneapolis BLM protest, and a black man beaten up at a Donald Trump rally, with Trump saying maybe he “should have been roughed up.” The recent Planned Parenthood shooting also embodies this violent response to “national enemies.” If this isn’t freikorps-esque street fighting, I don’t know what is.

I do not know if American imperial fortunes are in decline, but this truism is held by a large chunk of the population. Our fears are manifold: ISIS and Islamic extremism; the fact that white people will be a minority in the USA by 2042; the challenges to “traditional” or “Judeo-Christian” inherent in issues like Planned Parenthood support and homosexual marriage. With this fear, and sense of decline, we may face a reactionary ruling class ready to “circle the wagons” by curbing republican freedoms. We can counter this tendency by standing for free speech, pluralism, law and order, and social justice, along with other classical liberal ideas. If conservatives actually believe in these things, if their bluster on “freedom” isn’t just lip service, then they will stand with us.

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It is obvious now that the majority of Americans, in fact the majority of gun owners, support better screening of those who shop for guns and ammunition. The majority of civilized countries manage to let citizens own firearms without the carnage we see here in the U.S. One major difference is the requirements that citizens have to meet before owning guns. Background checks, mandatory training on handling and storing guns, and other reasonable requirements result in a shared sense of safety and freedom of movement in those countries. Public safety is just as much of a right as owning a gun. If the general population isn’t “free” to travel and go about our business, we have lost much of what America is supposed to be all about.

From research done on mass shootings in the U.S. over the last few years, we can say with some certainly that angry young men are more likely to commit these violent crimes that other members of our society. Other countries know this as well and have done a few things to try to address the situation. For example, in Germany, anyone younger than 25 must undergo a psychological examination before being allowed to own a gun. In France, ALL gun buyers must provide a medical certificate declaring them physically and mentally capable of safe handling of firearms.

I’d like to suggest we pass laws similar to those we all take for granted when it comes to driving a vehicle. There are minimum standards relating to rules of the road because we all desire some semblance of safety on the highways. Violations are punishable by fines, tickets, even prison. If we begin thinking of gun safety the same way we agree on the need for rules of the road and requirements for drivers, we can refocus the conversation where it needs to be—on something we all need and want—public safety.

Insurance companies require higher premiums for younger drivers, especially young male drivers, because of the long history of that demographic causing a disproportionate number of accidents and deaths on the highway. Psychological and neurological studies have shown that the judgment part of the brain isn’t completely developed until the early 20’s. It’s the last and most important part of the human brain to reach maturity.

It makes all kinds of sense to look more carefully at younger potential gun buyers. Like it or not, males under about age 25 are in a higher risk group for committing a violent act with a weapon. Yes, they can use other weapons such as knives, but guns that can kill dozens of people in minutes should never be allowed in the general population. Military assault rifles were designed for combat situations, not for grabbing a latte at the Bread Company. We should reinstate the assault weapons ban in Congress immediately. Serious outdoorsmen and hunters don’t use automatic weapons to kill deer.

Pro-gun enthusiasts complain that the criminal justice system doesn’t do enough to enforce laws already on the books. I agree. In fact, I’d like to see more serious attention paid to gun owners who leave loaded weapons where children can find them. If a toddler is taken to the ER because he ingested rat poison he found under the kitchen sink, family services is called in immediately. Recently, a mother in western Missouri was charged with first degree child endangerment and 2nd degree murder because her child drowned in a pond. But if that same child died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, the police would have called it an “accident.” No, it’s not an accident. Anyone who leaves loaded guns for children to find and use against themselves or others is guilty of criminal neglect.

While I try to avoid arguing about Second Amendment rights, I think it’s very important that we repeat over and over that the 2nd Amendment was about a “well- regulated militia” being necessary to defend the fledgling new nation. The former colonies had tried forming a Confederation, but that didn’t work. Each state was on its own as far as defending its interests against encroachment from British soldiers in Canada, Native American tribes to the west, and raids on Atlantic ports by various European shipping companies. With no standing army organized by the federal government, states had to call up, organize and arm local citizens, usually with limited success. When Americans were colonists of the British, there were prohibitions against stockpiling weapons. That is the logic behind the 2nd Amendment. It had nothing to do with the “freedom” to own guns, much less assault rifles and other automatic weapons. And it certainly had nothing to do with the “right” to “open carry.” I doubt that anyone who walked around with rifles hung around his body while shopping in town would have been taken seriously. In fact, that person’s neighbors might join together to disarm him for fear of his mental state.

The response to my suggestions will probably be the usual cop-outs about guns always being available illegally, stolen weapons being used in crimes committed in larger cities, etc. That’s a defeatist attitude, and we shouldn’t be bullied into giving up on reasonable regulations surrounding gun ownership and use. The other illogical argument is that people are safer with guns in the home, car or wherever. But statistics show that guns that are readily available are more often used against someone known to the killer. And, yes, someone really intent on suicide will find a way to do it, but a bullet to the head doesn’t give a depressed person time to reconsider.

The time has come to find reasonable and effective ways to reduce gun violence in general and mass shootings in particular. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the majority of us have the will at this critical time in our history.

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