Guest Opinion: Too many kids lost to gun violence, and for too many years
On Tuesday, Nov. 30, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, brought a semi-automatic handgun to school and opened fire on fellow students at Oxford High School in Michigan. He killed four students. He wounded six more, plus one teacher.
After every mass school shooting, we collectively grieve for the dead children, their friends, their families, and their communities. Yet, the same cycle keeps repeating itself over and over. Our children are no safer at school today than they were 20 years ago, at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado.
My thoughts always return to the Columbine survivors because the first one I met taught me an important lesson.
In July 1999, I was a first-year pediatric resident at the University of Colorado in Denver. Two months before, on April 20, two high school seniors opened fire at Columbine High School, killing 12 students and one teacher. Fifty-two terrified kids took refuge in the library. When the shooters entered the library, they randomly shot students who were hiding under the tables. In all, 10 students were killed and 12 were wounded in that one room.
Those who were spared watched helplessly as their friends and classmates bled to death on the library floor. My patient was one of them. Her mother said, “Please don’t close the door. My child cannot be in closed spaces after being in the library at Columbine High School that day. She still struggles with PTSD.”
Until that moment, I didn’t realize Columbine High School was only 20 minutes south of Denver. While I don’t remember why this child was being seen, I will never forget her mother’s words.
Over my three years in Colorado, I crossed paths with others who were in the building that day. I learned that the trauma from Columbine extended far beyond its library walls. At the time, the Columbine massacre seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe. I never imagined it would happen again. But it did. And it keeps happening.
Then, on December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old man shot his mother 4 times with a .22-caliber rifle before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary, in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six teachers were then slaughtered with weapons from the gun collection of the shooter’s mother. In Classroom 10, when the shooter’s gun jammed, six children managed to escape to safety. The lone survivor in Classroom 8 was a 6-year-old girl with enough foresight to play dead.
After Sandy Hook, I naively believed there would be sweeping changes in our gun laws. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Of course, the gun control debate briefly takes center stage after every mass school shooting. But nothing ever changes, no matter how many children die.
Parents in America have had to accept that schools are no longer the safe places they once were. But Sandy Hook changed me. At the time, I was a parent to three and pregnant with my fourth. I cried for days and read everything I could about the actions of the children who survived. When my oldest son started kindergarten in the fall of 2013, I wanted to give him the best chance to make it out alive if a shooter entered his school.
At the start of every school year, while other parents walk their children to their schoolroom, help them pick out a seat, drop off their labeled school supplies, and meet their new teacher, I memorize the layout of the classroom. I want to know which route provides the quickest escape. Together, my children and I brainstorm about what they should do if a shooter enters their school or worse, their classroom. We review the possible entry and exit points, the windows, and the doors and focus on how they can get out of the building safely.
If there is a door, they should use it. If there is a window, they should open it, climb out, and run in a zig-zag pattern away from the building. If their classroom is on the second or third floor of the school, we talk about the fact that their chances of survival are likely better sustaining a broken leg after jumping out the window than staying inside and trying to hide. And if there is no exit door or window, we talk about playing dead. My children have practiced playing dead. I have told them to get as close to the nearest dead child and stay still for as long as they can. In truth, the “active shooter conversation” continues throughout the year.
To me, this is the reality for every parent in America with school-aged children.
This brings me to my point: We must accept that gun control in America is a pipe dream.
We must find another way to prevent school shootings, like implementing the same security measures at our schools that exist at our airports. Merely one to two million passengers fly every day in this country, yet airport security measures transformed overnight following 9/11. Forty-eight million students attend public schools every day nationwide and yet, when children are gunned down in cold blood, we throw up our hands in despair after the latest gun-control measure fails in Congress.
Enough is enough. Nothing will change until we acknowledge the fact that there are too many parents out there like James and Jennifer Crumbley, who will buy their children guns for Christmas and leave them unsecured at home. There are too many parents who will ignore the warning signs that their children are preoccupied with violence. And there are too many Americans who love their guns more than other people's children.
Children like yours or mine, who are no safer than those children in the Columbine High School library two decades ago.
Dr. Niran Al-Agba is a pediatrician in Silverdale and writes a regular column for the Kitsap Sun. Contact her at niranalagba@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Opinion Gun control is a lost cause. So what can we do?
