Gun Control Legislation and School Shootings in America

Introduction: Gun Violence and the Second Amendment

The availability of and access to firearms, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution by the Second Amendment, has created a multitude of consequences for modern Americans. The impacts of a loosely regulated gun market include the highest per capita rate of gun-related deaths in the world, major metropolitan areas like Detroit and Chicago struggling with unprecedented murder rates, and toddlers routinely finding their parents' weapons and dying after accidental discharge. Several longitudinal studies have demonstrated that the U.S. is by far the world's leader in both gun ownership and gun-related fatalities. America's rate of 10.2 gun-related deaths per 100,000 citizens is more than double the rate of any other developed nation.

Congress has historically been averse to passing restrictive gun control legislation, as a powerful firearm lobby led by the National Rifle Association has successfully kept the advances of gun control advocates at bay. With a string of recent school shootings and other episodes of random gun violence — including the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 17 others at a political event, and dozens of similar unprovoked shootings — the call for federal legislation to improve gun control in America has grown louder. However, despite several speeches by a seemingly determined President Obama — many of which came in the immediate aftermath of the devastating Sandy Hook Elementary shooting — there was little to no progress on this front in the months that followed. This paper examines the facts on this divisive issue by combining scholarly research, government statistics, and news reports to form the foundation of a valid argument regarding the passage of tighter gun control laws.

Background: Sandy Hook and the National Debate

With the disturbing news of yet another school shooting shattering the lives of innocent children — this time leaving twenty first-grade students and six adults dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut — the national media, concerned parents, and strained educators once again focused their collective attention on the epidemic that is America's institutionalized lack of gun control. In the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, which claimed 13 lives, and the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 students and faculty, the Sandy Hook tragedy brought the consequences of rampant bullying in schools back to the forefront of national consciousness — a problem compounded by the widespread availability of military-style assault weapons.

The unimaginable horror inflicted on six-year-old children at the hands of a gun-wielding assailant inspired an outpouring of grief across America, reinvigorating the rancorous political and social debate over gun control legislation in the process. It has been widely reported that "in the first 15 hours following a mass shooting that claimed more than two dozen lives Friday at [the] Connecticut elementary school, more than 100,000 Americans took their anger and frustration to the White House, asking the Obama administration for a renewed national debate on gun control" (Martosko, 2012). The President responded to these calls at a vigil two days after the shooting occurred, announcing his plans to enact sweeping gun control legislation. Just a month later, he signed an "initiative to reduce gun violence [that] includes both twelve legislative proposals that would need to be acted on by Congress and twenty-three executive actions" (Perkinson, 2013).

Policy Analysis: Proposed Gun Control Measures

The question facing school administrators and public policymakers in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy is whether stricter gun control legislation of the kind proposed by President Obama would have prevented the shooting from taking place. The fact that the assailant, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, had easy access to heavy-duty firearms owned by his mother — whom he shot four times and murdered before beginning his rampage — was covered exhaustively by major press outlets. Lanza's proximity to guns prompted many in the public to question why a private citizen would need the high-caliber firepower provided by the military-grade Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle and similar assault-style automatic weapons.

To address the paradox between preaching public safety and permitting unstable individuals like Lanza to own and operate weapons designed for military use, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California proposed legislation that would ban the sale and manufacture of 157 types of semiautomatic weapons, as well as magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition (Steinhauer, 2013). While many proposals addressed the limitation of ammunition magazines, background checks prior to purchase, and other aspects of firearm ownership, no prominent politician addressed the underlying issue: what could motivate an individual to slaughter innocent children with such depravity? Despite a wealth of evidence suggesting that school shootings are nearly always precipitated by prolonged periods of intense bullying, the vast majority of legislation proposed after Sandy Hook focused on reinstating the lapsed assault weapons ban and tightening existing gun controls, rather than preventing bullying from turning mentally unstable children into individuals capable of killing dozens of people in mere moments.

Conclusion

The evidence reviewed in this paper points to two parallel failures: the failure of federal policymakers to enact meaningful restrictions on the sale and ownership of assault-style weapons, and the failure of schools and communities to address the bullying that drives so many perpetrators of mass violence. Gun control legislation addressing assault weapons, ammunition magazine capacity, and background checks represents a necessary step forward. However, treating firearms as the sole cause of school shootings ignores the documented psychological trajectory — rooted in bullying and social isolation — that precedes nearly every such event. A comprehensive approach to preventing school violence must address both the availability of weapons and the social conditions that turn vulnerable young people toward catastrophic acts of violence.

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