As someone who is a pastor and “pro-life,” I think we should explore solutions to gun violence that protect human life even if that means imposing reasonable restrictions on the exercise of gun rights.
“Being pro-life means standing up to Planned Parenthood and the National Rifle Association,” because being pro-life is “bigger than abortion, it includes defending the voiceless and vulnerable, including innocent children at school. … [and] ending or reducing the instruments of violence that can end a child’s life,” Australian priest Michael F. Bird wrote recently.
We are experiencing a national and local crisis of gun violence, particularly as it is affecting our children and the places they are educated. But, nothing meaningful is being done to put a stop to the violence inflicted upon our children. In my view, we have reached a tipping point that demands change, but many advocates for gun rights seem stuck on the talking points of the past to justify the murder and mayhem inflicted on our children.
The American love affair with guns, including in Nevada, is unhealthy and destructive.
Since the beginning of 2023, there have been 16 school shootings this year that have resulted in injuries or deaths. There have been 160 such shootings since 2018. There were more school shootings in 2022 — 46 — than in any year since at least 1999.
If a mass shooting is defined as resulting in the death of four or more people, not including the perpetrator, 175 people have died in 15 such events connected to U.S. schools and colleges — from 1999′s Columbine High School massacre to March’s shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.
There have been 377 school shootings since Columbine.
“Since the Columbine shooting, more than 311,000 children have been exposed to gun violence at 331 schools,” according to The Washington Post. The Post reviewed more than 180 shootings committed by juveniles since Columbine, and in cases where the source of the gun could be determined, 86 percent of the weapons were found in the homes of friends, relatives, or parents.
The leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States is firearm-related injuries. See the following graphic from the New England Journal of Medicine:
Not drug overdoses.
Not car accidents.
Firearm related injuries are the leading cause of death for children and adolescents.
Let that fact sink into your consciousness for a moment.
Recently, researcher John Burn-Murdoch reported that one in 25 American 5-year-old children today will not make it to their 40th birthday. He went on to explain, “No parent should ever have to bury their child, but on average one set of parents from every kindergarten class in the US most likely will.”
Gun violence is killing our children.
We can do better.
We must do better.
These deaths are avoidable.
With every death of a child because of gun violence, the central question presented is why does our government make it relatively easy for deranged, mentally ill, and violent people to arm themselves with weapons of mass murder? In most cases, the weapons being used in these shootings are similar to the weapons we send soldiers out to fight wars with.
Apparently, while decrying the “mental health crisis” as the proximate cause of the rise in gun violence in our country, the best solution my political party, the Republican Party, seems to offer is “better doors” and “hardened” schools. By their logic, we can make schools safer for our children by making them more like prisons and arming our teachers.
My “fiscally conservative” friends are willing to spend billions on school security, but are unwilling to adopt reasonable policies to keep the weapons of mass child murder out of the hands of criminals.
Why? Because of an esoteric threat to Second Amendment gun rights? I have heard intelligent people say that this right is important just in case, one day, we may want to overthrow our government. They then cite some quote by Thomas Jefferson that goes something like, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
In response, let me first say this quote is always cited out of context. Second, no citizen militia is going to overthrow a government defended by the most advanced military in human history. And, finally, the blood of our children cry out from the graves to restrain unbridled liberty for the sake of their safety and security.
Our children should not be the ones who water the tree of liberty with their blood anymore. They have sacrificed enough for this misguided notion of “liberty.”
Every constitutional right comes with a constitutional responsibility. The right to religious liberty comes with the responsibility to treat those with different religious beliefs with equal dignity.
The U.S. Constitution protects free speech while not protecting speech that harms others, including obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising, and defamatory speech.
The right to travel by car, train, plane, etc., a privacy right protected by our Constitution, is subject to numerous regulations to protect the safety of the public.
The fundamental problem we have in our country right now is that we simply do not value human life more than our individual rights. This is reflected in almost every public debate where we advocate for protection of our “rights” over the protection of human life.
Unfortunately, accepting a reasonable balance between protecting life and protecting gun ownership is lost on gun rights advocates, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA has become the Planned Parenthood/NARAL of the conservative movement in our country as they dogmatically refuse to support commonsense policy solutions that will protect and preserve human life.
When will doing what is right to protect life take priority over protecting a “right” that costs lives?
Extreme risk protection order laws and stronger background checks, particularly to screen for mental illness and other red flags for violence before allowing a gun purchase, are reasonable policy proposals that do not unreasonably regulate a constitutional right.
Why not regulate guns like we do cars, trucks, motorcycles, airplanes, etc.? It would not inhibit Second Amendment rights to adopt a policy requiring every gun owner to register their gun and hold a user’s license for each gun they own.
Additionally, requiring gun owners to obtain insurance for each gun they own in case someone is injured by the gun would not violate the Second Amendment because it would treat gun ownership and usage like vehicle ownership and usage with an eye toward public safety.
Many who object to such proposals argue, “evil does not exist within a gun. It exists in the minds and hearts of those who pull the trigger for evil purposes.” I have seen this quoted in memes on social media and others like this after every school shooting. It supports the mindless political mantra, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
But if you follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion, basically, the writer is saying we should not have any laws regulating evil and the tools used to carry out evil purposes. The logic goes on to conclude people are going to do evil no matter what the law is, so the rule of law does not matter.
However, we know from experience that the rule of law does matter and that it is effective at reducing evil actions. The strength of the American experience is a shared fidelity to the rule of law.
Tragedies, like the one that occurred nearly a year ago in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered by an active shooter at Robb Elementary School, are far too common.
Ironically, Uvalde spent money on security. In fact, Uvalde could have been seen as the model for policies pushed by some gun rights activists to prevent school shootings. In this regard, Uvalde’s school district doubled its security budget after the Santa Fe school shooting where 10 people were killed just four years earlier.
Moreover, the Uvalde School District had its own police force, threat assessment teams, social media monitoring software, and security measures including fencing and a locked doors policy. Around 40 percent of Uvalde’s budget was spent on a police force, and the officers even held an active shooter training course just weeks before the school shooting occurred.
It is time that lawmakers take real steps to regulate gun ownership. Active shooter drills, police response, armed security officers, etc., do not prevent a school shooting. They are developed with the assumption that school shootings are inevitable and can only be mitigated, not prevented. This is a lie. School shootings are preventable. As one commentator righty points out:
“We know that permissive state gun laws are associated with more mass shootings and school shootings, and that licensing laws for firearms and bans of large capacity magazines are associated with fewer mass shootings. We know that Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) work to prevent gun violence when properly implemented. We know that the average age of a school shooter is only 16, and that the youngest active school shooter was only 12. We therefore know that the implementation of laws for strict safe storage and child access prevention (CAP) would keep firearms out of the hands of the majority of school shooters. And we know that the Uvalde shooter — who was only 18 — would not have been able to obtain an AR-15 if the minimum age of purchase was raised to 21.”
Each day, 12 children die from gun violence in America, while another 32 are shot and injured. If we don’t demand that lawmakers change the way gun ownership is regulated, perhaps one day your child and their school will be added to this unconscionable list of schools where children have been traumatized and killed:
Thurston High School
Columbine High School
Heritage High School
Deming Middle School
Fort Gibson Middle School
Buell Elementary School
Lake Worth Middle School
University of Arkansas
Junipero Serra High School
Santana High School
Bishop Neumann High School
Pacific Lutheran University
Granite Hills High School
Lew Wallace High School
Martin Luther King, Jr High School
Appalachian School of Law
Washington High School
Conception Abbey
Benjamin Tasker Middle School
University of Arizona
Lincoln High School
John McDonogh High School
Red Lion Area Junior High School
Case Western Reserve University
Rocori High School
Ballou High School
Randallstown High School
Bowen High School
Red Lake Senior High School
Harlan Community Academy High School
Campbell County High School
Milwee Middle School
Roseburg High School
Pine Middle School
Essex Elementary School
Duquesne University
Platte Canyon High School
Weston High School
West Nickel Mines School
Joplin Memorial Middle School
Henry Foss High School
Compton Centennial High School
Virginia Tech
Success Tech Academy
Miami Carol City Senior High School
Hamilton High School
Louisiana Technical College
Mitchell High School
EO Green Junior High School
Northern Illinois University
Lakota Middle School
Knoxville Central High School
Willoughby South High School
Henry Ford High School
University of Central Arkansas
Dillard High School
Dunbar High School
Hampton University
Harvard College
Larose-Cut Off Middle School
International Studies Academy
Skyline College
Discovery Middle School
University of Alabama
DeKalb School
Deer Creek Middle School
Ohio State University
Mumford High School
University of Texas
Kelly Elementary School
Marinette High School
Aurora Central High School
Millard South High School
Martinsville West Middle School
Worthing High School
Millard South High School
Highlands Intermediate School
Cape Fear High School
Chardon High School
Episcopal School of Jacksonville
Oikos University
Hamilton High School
Perry Hall School
Normal Community High School
University of South Alabama
Banner Academy South
University of Southern California
Sandy Hook Elementary School
Apostolic Revival Center Christian School
Taft Union High School
Osborn High School
Stevens Institute of Business and Arts
Hazard Community and Technical College
Chicago State University
Lone Star College-North
Cesar Chavez High School
Price Middle School
University of Central Florida
New River Community College
Grambling State University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School
Ronald E McNair Discovery Academy
North Panola High School
Carver High School
Agape Christian Academy
Sparks Middle School
North Carolina A&T State University
Stephenson High School
Brashear High School
West Orange High School
Arapahoe High School
Edison High School
Liberty Technology Magnet High School
Hillhouse High School
Berrendo Middle School
Purdue University
South Carolina State University
Los Angeles Valley College
Charles F Brush High School
University of Southern California
Georgia Regents University
Academy of Knowledge Preschool
Benjamin Banneker High School
D H Conley High School
East English Village Preparatory Academy
Paine College
Georgia Gwinnett College
John F Kennedy High School
Seattle Pacific University
Reynolds High School
Indiana State University
Albemarle High School
Fern Creek Traditional High School
Langston Hughes High School
Marysville Pilchuck High School
Florida State University
Miami Carol City High School
Rogers State University
Rosemary Anderson High School
Wisconsin Lutheran High School
Frederick High School
Tenaya Middle School
Bethune-Cookman University
Pershing Elementary School
Wayne Community College
JB Martin Middle School
Southwestern Classical Academy
Savannah State University
Harrisburg High School
Umpqua Community College
Northern Arizona University
Texas Southern University
Tennessee State University
Winston-Salem State University
Mojave High School
Lawrence Central High School
Franklin High School
Muskegon Heights High School
Independence High School
Madison High School
Antigo High School
University of California-Los Angeles
Jeremiah Burke High School
Alpine High School
Townville Elementary School
Vigor High School
Linden McKinley STEM Academy
June Jordan High School for Equity
Union Middle School
Mueller Park Junior High School
West Liberty-Salem High School
University of Washington
King City High School
North Park Elementary School
North Lake College
Freeman High School
Mattoon High School
Rancho Tehama Elementary School
Aztec High School
Wake Forest University
Italy High School
NET Charter High School
Marshall County High School
Sal Castro Middle School
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
Great Mills High School
Central Michigan University
Huffman High School
Frederick Douglass High School
Forest High School
Highland High School
Dixon High School
Santa Fe High School
Noblesville West Middle School
University of North Carolina Charlotte
STEM School Highlands Ranch
Edgewood High School
Palm Beach Central High School
Providence Career & Technical Academy
Fairley High School (school bus)
Canyon Springs High School
Dennis Intermediate School
Florida International University
Central Elementary School
Cascade Middle School
Davidson High School
Prairie View A & M University
Altascocita High School
Central Academy of Excellence
Cleveland High School
Robert E Lee High School
Cheyenne South High School
Grambling State University
Blountsville Elementary School
Holmes County, Mississippi (school bus)
Prescott High School
College of the Mainland
Wynbrooke Elementary School
UNC Charlotte
Riverview Florida (school bus)
Second Chance High School
Carman-Ainsworth High School
Williwaw Elementary School
Monroe Clark Middle School
Central Catholic High School
Jeanette High School
Eastern Hills High School
DeAnza High School
Ridgway High School
Reginald F Lewis High School
Saugus High School
Pleasantville High School
Waukesha South High School
Oshkosh High School
Catholic Academy of New Haven
Bellaire High School
North Crowley High School
McAuliffe Elementary School
South Oak Cliff High School
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Sonora High School
Western Illinois University
Oxford High School
Robb Elementary SchoolThurston High School
Columbine High School
Heritage High School
Deming Middle School
Fort Gibson Middle School
Buell Elementary School
Lake Worth Middle School
University of Arkansas
Junipero Serra High School
Santana High School
Bishop Neumann High School
Pacific Lutheran University
Granite Hills High School
Lew Wallace High School
Martin Luther King, Jr High School
Appalachian School of Law
Washington High School
Conception Abbey
Benjamin Tasker Middle School
University of Arizona
Lincoln High School
John McDonogh High School
Red Lion Area Junior High School
Case Western Reserve University
Rocori High School
Ballou High School
Randallstown High School
Bowen High School
Red Lake Senior High School
Harlan Community Academy High School
Campbell County High School
Milwee Middle School
Roseburg High School
Pine Middle School
Essex Elementary School
Duquesne University
Platte Canyon High School
Weston High School
West Nickel Mines School
Joplin Memorial Middle School
Henry Foss High School
Compton Centennial High School
Virginia Tech
Success Tech Academy
Miami Carol City Senior High School
Hamilton High School
Louisiana Technical College
Mitchell High School
EO Green Junior High School
Northern Illinois University
Lakota Middle School
Knoxville Central High School
Willoughby South High School
Henry Ford High School
University of Central Arkansas
Dillard High School
Dunbar High School
Hampton University
Harvard College
Larose-Cut Off Middle School
International Studies Academy
Skyline College
Discovery Middle School
University of Alabama
DeKalb School
Deer Creek Middle School
Ohio State University
Mumford High School
University of Texas
Kelly Elementary School
Marinette High School
Aurora Central High School
Millard South High School
Martinsville West Middle School
Worthing High School
Millard South High School
Highlands Intermediate School
Cape Fear High School
Chardon High School
Episcopal School of Jacksonville
Oikos University
Hamilton High School
Perry Hall School
Normal Community High School
University of South Alabama
Banner Academy South
University of Southern California
Sandy Hook Elementary School
Apostolic Revival Center Christian School
Taft Union High School
Osborn High School
Stevens Institute of Business and Arts
Hazard Community and Technical College
Chicago State University
Lone Star College-North
Cesar Chavez High School
Price Middle School
University of Central Florida
New River Community College
Grambling State University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School
Ronald E McNair Discovery Academy
North Panola High School
Carver High School
Agape Christian Academy
Sparks Middle School
North Carolina A&T State University
Stephenson High School
Brashear High School
West Orange High School
Arapahoe High School
Edison High School
Liberty Technology Magnet High School
Hillhouse High School
Berrendo Middle School
Purdue University
South Carolina State University
Los Angeles Valley College
Charles F Brush High School
University of Southern California
Georgia Regents University
Academy of Knowledge Preschool
Benjamin Banneker High School
D H Conley High School
East English Village Preparatory Academy
Paine College
Georgia Gwinnett College
John F Kennedy High School
Seattle Pacific University
Reynolds High School
Indiana State University
Albemarle High School
Fern Creek Traditional High School
Langston Hughes High School
Marysville Pilchuck High School
Florida State University
Miami Carol City High School
Rogers State University
Rosemary Anderson High School
Wisconsin Lutheran High School
Frederick High School
Tenaya Middle School
Bethune-Cookman University
Pershing Elementary School
Wayne Community College
JB Martin Middle School
Southwestern Classical Academy
Savannah State University
Harrisburg High School
Umpqua Community College
Northern Arizona University
Texas Southern University
Tennessee State University
Winston-Salem State University
Mojave High School
Lawrence Central High School
Franklin High School
Muskegon Heights High School
Independence High School
Madison High School
Antigo High School
University of California-Los Angeles
Jeremiah Burke High School
Alpine High School
Townville Elementary School
Vigor High School
Linden McKinley STEM Academy
June Jordan High School for Equity
Union Middle School
Mueller Park Junior High School
West Liberty-Salem High School
University of Washington
King City High School
North Park Elementary School
North Lake College
Freeman High School
Mattoon High School
Rancho Tehama Elementary School
Aztec High School
Wake Forest University
Italy High School
NET Charter High School
Marshall County High School
Sal Castro Middle School
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
Great Mills High School
Central Michigan University
Huffman High School
Frederick Douglass High School
Forest High School
Highland High School
Dixon High School
Santa Fe High School
Noblesville West Middle School
University of North Carolina Charlotte
STEM School Highlands Ranch
Edgewood High School
Palm Beach Central High School
Providence Career & Technical Academy
Fairley High School (school bus)
Canyon Springs High School
Dennis Intermediate School
Florida International University
Central Elementary School
Cascade Middle School
Davidson High School
Prairie View A & M University
Altascocita High School
Central Academy of Excellence
Cleveland High School
Robert E Lee High School
Cheyenne South High School
Grambling State University
Blountsville Elementary School
Holmes County, Mississippi (school bus)
Prescott High School
College of the Mainland
Wynbrooke Elementary School
UNC Charlotte
Riverview Florida (school bus)
Second Chance High School
Carman-Ainsworth High School
Williwaw Elementary School
Monroe Clark Middle School
Central Catholic High School
Jeanette High School
Eastern Hills High School
DeAnza High School
Ridgway High School
Reginald F Lewis High School
Saugus High School
Pleasantville High School
Waukesha South High School
Oshkosh High School
Catholic Academy of New Haven
Bellaire High School
North Crowley High School
McAuliffe Elementary School
South Oak Cliff High School
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Sonora High School
Western Illinois University
Oxford High School
Bridgewater University
Robb Elementary School
Covenant Christian School
Jason D. Guinasso is the managing partner of law firm Hutchison & Steffen’s office in Reno. He is a litigator and trial attorney who also maintains an appellate practice, which includes petitions for judicial review of administrative decisions, extraordinary writs, and appeals to the Nevada Supreme Court. He also is legal counsel for the Reno/Fernley Crisis Pregnancy Center and an associate pastor at Ministerio Palabra de Vida where he serves a diverse multicultural church.