Are we willing to turn schools into prisons to protect kids from mass shootings?

Arming teachers and militarizing classrooms isn't compatible with America's idea of childhood. Are AR-15s really worth all that?

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Everybody wants to keep children safe in school. That, I hope, is a given. President Trump wants that. Democrats want that. Republicans want that. The NRA wants that, too. But the added tragedy of America's unique rash of school shootings is that, no matter how sad and angry and sickened everybody is after a slaughter of innocents, the federal government keeps doing nothing.

Well, not nothing, exactly — in September 2004, five years and five months after the murder of 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado, the Republican-led Congress let the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expire. Four years later, in 2008, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own firearms, not just in a well-regulated militia. On the state level, Republican-led governments have loosened gun laws and Democratic-led states have tightened them, to the extent allowed.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.