Laurie Schaull
Teens For Gun Reform protest, Washington, D.C. February 2018.
Last year, during a regional high school debate championship in Orlando, Florida, we were suddenly ushered out of the school, instructed to leave the building while we waited for the next round of debate to begin.
It was the national qualifying tournament, the most important competition of the season, so the building was packed with hundreds of anxious high school students. My teammates and I rushed outside with our folders in hand, wide-eyed and confused. As soon as we reconvened outside, we whispered amongst ourselves.
Some students recalled hearing a popping noise as they were competing. In our conversation, we exchanged all sorts of possibilities, but what struck me the most was the first thought we each had: it was something to do with gun violence.
This wasn’t simply a coincidence. As students, we’ve spent hours of educational time crouching under desks to drill for possible attacks. We’ve heard countless stories of school shootings and massacres, beginning with the Pulse Nightclub shooting that occurred three years ago in our own county.
The fear is everywhere, especially in educational spaces.
Our entire community of students and adults have lived in fear ever since. At that moment of urgency, the fear always hidden in the back of our minds—the fear of gun violence—unraveled before us.
It turned out that we were asked to leave the cafeteria that day because of a small-scale explosion; a student had set fire in one of the bathrooms. We were all strangely relieved.
In any other context, an explosion would be more than enough to warrant hysteria. But it was February 24, 2018, just ten days after the terrible shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in our home state of Florida, and fear had once again rapidly taken over our state.
That sudden evacuation was not the only time that I have experienced this type of fear.
Just recently, during lunchtime on a regular school day at my own high school, we were again told to leave the cafeteria. It was an administrative issue this time, but once again, all of my friends initially feared an attack.
Lorie Schaull
I was in a different setting, around different people, but I felt the same fear. I realized then that the fear was everywhere, especially in educational spaces. It’s 2019, more than three years since our community was devastated by the massacre at Pulse Nightclub. But Orlando still hasn’t recovered.
This year also marks the twentieth anniversary of the Columbine High School Massacre. Since then, gun violence in schools has not waned in the headlines. As a Central Florida student, gun violence has overshadowed my education from a young age.
In March 2013, just months before I enrolled at Glenridge Middle School, a twelve-year-old student was caught with a loaded semi-automatic weapon and a handgun on campus. It left a population of middle-school students, parents, and teachers in a state of shock. I watched as my own parents struggled with the decision to send me to a school that had been so close to becoming the next site of a mass shooting.
For my parents and hundreds of others at Glenridge Middle School, there was no alternative but to live in fear of gun violence. Ever since I began attending Orange County Public Schools, the district has encountered so many guns and threats, particularly in the past year, that we are now on the brink of desensitization.
The epidemic of gun violence is of course not unique to Orlando or even to Florida. But unlike most other communities that have fallen victim to such a disaster, Orlando has consistently been praised for its resilience.
But how resilient are we really, when we must acknowledge the fear that still exists within the community, something that cannot be solved by talk of solidarity and love alone? Our recovery has long been inhibited by a lack of proper political reform. We must be given the space for recovery within political and legislative spheres.
In the wake of the 2018 school shooting at Parkland, it seemed as though reform was coming. Thanks to Parkland student activists, much was accomplished in Florida, including a ban on bump stocks, a raise in the required age for purchasing weapons, and the creation of the Office of Safe Schools.
But just as progress had been made, Florida passed a bill to arm classroom teachers. In an academic environment where even phones are considered distractions, guns—the very source of our anxiety—will pour into schools at a number exponentially greater than ever before.
Even as progress had been made on gun reform, Florida passed a bill to arm classroom teachers.
The environment responsible for teaching students not to fight violence with violence now allows teachers to fight guns with guns. Such a proposal will never solve the widespread fear that plagues student communities; if anything, it will exacerbate it.
Gun violence is a public health concern. But rarely is it treated as such. Not only does it lead to loss of life and injury for shooting victims, it leaves survivors with mental health disorders and breeds a culture of fear. While the mental health of perpetrators is often discussed, the needs of survivors have long been ignored.
Since the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School two student survivors have died by suicide—demonstrating the long-lasting mental health impacts that gun violence can have.
Until 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were barred from researching gun violence. But now, it seems that even when that research takes place, NRA-backed politicians are unwilling to acknowledge it. A 2009 study in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that increased gun possession is not associated with protection from violence. In fact, those who possess guns are 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those who do not possess guns.
And a 2018 article in the Journal of American Public Health concluded that arming teachers will likely heighten anxiety, fear, and depression, thereby negatively impacting the educational climate. It also noted that “a recent study that used a national sample found that more than half of the parents of school-aged children oppose school personnel carrying firearms.”
Arming teachers is not a solution to the epidemic of gun violence—it’s a Band-Aid that aims to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. Rather than focusing attention to universalizing background checks and implementing other educational and safety methods that have been proven successful, the policy of arming teachers is aiding the spread of misinformation.
Every night before I go to bed, I turn on the local news. Almost every night, the first and last headline I hear is about a shooting. Central Florida is not just a survivor; it is a continual victim. I’m tired of hearing these headlines. I’m tired of looking for hiding spots in every school building. I’m tired of being afraid.