Fourcast JADE April 2018

JADE The Fourcast Magazine

The Hockaday School Volume 1, Issue 2 April 2018

AMERICA'S NEXT BATTLEFRONT: OUR CLASSROOMS

ABOUT JADE

This year, The Fourcast has added a new magazine to its traditional coverage. Named for the stone set in the ring of all graduating seniors, which was designed by Tiffany in 1917, JADE offers an in-depth look at the most pressing issues to the Hockaday community. Ed Long, Dean of Upper School, once remarked that Ela Hockaday chose the jade stone because she considered it to be a symbol of wisdom. In honor of the stone's legacy, JADE hopes to help inform the community and foster knowledgeable conversations about challenging topics.

JADE | The Fourcast Magazine The Hockaday School 11600 Welch Road Dallas, Texas 75229 214.363.6311 Volume 1, Issue 2 April 2018

JADE is a magazine supplement to The Fourcast, The Hockaday School's student newspaper. Magazine Editor: Mary Orsak Assistant Magazine Editor: Eliana Goodman Staff Writers: Amelia Brown, Michelle Chen, Sahasra Chigurupati, Ashlye Dullye, Charlotte Dross, Shea Duffy, Morgan Fisher, Emily Fuller, Shreya Gunukula, Elizabeth Guo, Paige Halverson, Aurelia Han, Cheryl Hao, Maria Harrison, Ali Hurst, Ponette Kim, Niamh McKinney, Katie O'Meara, Eugene Seong, Kate Woodhouse and Emily Wu Contributing Writers: Charlsie Doan and Tracy Walder Staff Photographer: Lauren Puplampu Faculty Adviser: Ana Rosenthal. Editorial Policy: The Fourcast Magazine is written primarily for students of the Hockaday Upper School, its faculty and staff. The Fourcast Magazine has a press run of 600 and is printed by Greater Dallas Press. It is distributed free of charge to the Hockaday community. Businesses who wish to advertise in The Fourcast Magazine should contact Morgan Fisher, Business Manager, at mfisher@ hockaday.org. We reserve the right to refuse any advertising which is deemed inappropriate to the Hockaday community. Opinions are clearly marked and are the expressed opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect that of The Fourcast staff, its adviser or any member of the Hockaday community. Any questions or concerns about should be addressed to Aurelia Han, Editor-in-Chief, at ahan@hockaday.org.

CONTENTS

4 7 9 10 12 15 16 17 18 22

ON THE COVER Photography: Mary Orsak, Magazine Editor, and Eliana Goodman, Assistant Magazine Editor

23

COLUMBINE

The Shots that Shocked the Nation

ACTIVISM

The Parkland Effect

SAFETY

The New Normal and How to Handle Challenging Conversations

4

ARMING TEACHERS

Trump Wants to Arm Teachers. Walder Responds.

CULTURE

How the Gun Has Ruled America Since 1776

7

MENTAL HEALTH

The Mental Illness Paradox

PSYCHOLOGY

Making a School Shooter

12

TEXAS

Keep Calm and Carry On

MEDIA

Point and Shoot: Gun Violence in the Media

EDITORIAL

Killer of the American Dream

OP-ED

Charlsie Doan '19 Reflects on Republican Pro-Gun Ideologies

18 Photography provided by commonswikimedia.org

NINETEEN YEARS AGO ON THIS DAY, ONE JUNIOR AND ONE SENIOR MURDERED 12 STUDENTS AND ONE TEACHER AT COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL

5

The Shots That Shocked The Nation On April 20, 1999, in Littleton, Colorado, Columbine High School students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris committed one of the most deadly school shootings in United States history, killing 13 and injuring 24 more.

Katie O'Meara, News Editor, and Shea Duffy, Staff Writer

C

Columbine, the first major school shooting in the country’s history, subsequently shocked the nation.

Prior to the attack at Columbine, the only comparable shooting occurred in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin where lone gunman Charles Whitman shot and killed 17 people.

Frank DeAngelis was the principal, his third year in the role, at Columbine High School at the time of the massacre and remembers the day vividly.

“It was April 20, a beautiful, beautiful spring day. I was sitting in my office getting ready to go to do lunch room duty and I was late getting downstairs. As I got ready to go downstairs, my secretary ran in to my office and said there had been a report of gunfire,” DeAngelis said. “The first thing that I am thinking is that it has to be a senior prank because we were about a month away from the seniors graduating, so I ran out of my office and my worst nightmare became a reality.”

This nightmare was Klebold and Harris. The duo began the massacre at approximately 11:15 a.m. by placing bombs throughout the school, including two in the school’s cafeteria. By 11:19 a.m., Klebold and Harris started shooting, killing 17-year-old Rachel Scott, who was sitting outside of the school building at the time.

The two students then continued to shoot, killing one more student and injuring more, before entering the school near the cafeteria.

According to DeAngelis, he then encountered the gunmen in the school.

“I saw a gun barrel coming towards me and shots being fired. He had a long gun. Glass was breaking behind me,” DeAngelis said. “It was at that point that it really everything that I experienced kind of slowed down.”

At this point, the gunmen began to enter the school’s library, while DeAngelis saw the shooters and on the other side of the hallway a group of girls leaving the locker room.

“They were going right into harm’s way, right into the crossfire of the gunmen. So I ran down to them to get them down a hallway, so that we were away from the gunmen. I went to try and open the door, but the door was locked,” DeAngelis said.

“So I reached in my pocket and pulled out a key. I had 35 keys on a key ring and I was able to, the first time, pull out the key, stuck it in the door, and opened the door, so it saved us.”

After unlocking the door, DeAngelis and the students were able to leave the school and go to a park, where DeAngelis spent the rest of the day with police.

After 54 minutes, at 12:08 p.m. the shooting ended with the suicides of Klebold and Harris.

Even though the massacre ended, the country had only begun to cope with the tragedy.

According to DeAngelis, Columbine prompted him to focus on school security, ultimately leading to his involvement with foundations including Safe and Sound Schools and the I Love U Guys Foundation, which has held workshops at Hockaday with the faculty and staff for training on school safety.

“Prior to Columbine, basically all we did was fire drills. And now, they do the standard response protocol. It really makes a big difference on keeping kids safe so I think that is the most important thing,” DeAngelis said.

After Columbine On Sept. 27, 2006, a shooting at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colorado, left John Michael and Ellen Keyes without their only daughter, Emily. Just five years after this shooting, a gunman entered Deer Creek Middle School in Edmond, Oklahoma, on Feb. 23, 2010. The two schools, miles away from Columbine High School, reminded the Denver area that there was still more to be done to prevent school shootings.

Two years after the death of their daughter, John Michael and Ellen Keyes founded the ‘I Love U Guys Foundation’ to improve school safety and to answer the question: “Can we really help?”

And after David Benke, the math teacher that successfully stopped the Deer Creek Middle School shooting, was introduced to Ellen and John Michael, he realized he wanted to become acquainted with the program that saved his school’s life.

“I learned about the people who were behind the poster that was on my wall,” Benke said.

Deer Creek Middle School was not the only school with this standard protocol poster plastered around the campus. In fact, the poster outlining the four immediate steps necessary to prevent a dangerous situation has reached, according to the foundation’s website, thousands of schools nationwide.

“We began having conversations with the students about what we were going to do,” Benke

6 said. “It was stuff like ‘you’re going to get in this section of the room, and you need to be quiet.

This is serious. We’re going to turn the lights off.

We’re going to make sure you’re going to get into this particular section of the room so that you cannot be seen.’”

Benke hoped that if danger ever entered his classroom that he would be able to do something. But he knew that if the students were ever to be left alone, it was necessary they learned to fend for themselves.

“Students are not that familiar with guns. If the people in the dispatch office ask what kind of gun it is, the students might say ‘I don’t know, it was really big and really loud’,” Benke said.

There were no deaths following the shooting at Deer Creek Middle School, and David Benke credits the ‘I Love U Guys Foundation’ for the training in emergency response.

“There are things adults don’t want to talk about. When those posters went up, we had to start talking about it,” Benke said. “We needed to know what the plan was or we needed to make a plan if we didn’t have one.”

This conversation has reached most schools around the United States, but still, school shootings are a common media headline.

On Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, leading to the deadliest shooting at a grade school in the US. Twenty-eight people were shot and killed, and of those 28, 20 were children.

Earlier in the year, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the school principal, ordered a new security system installed, requiring visitors to be visibly identified and buzzed in. The school’s doors were locked every day at 9:30 a.m. However, this did not stop Laza from shooting an entrance into the building with an assault weapon.

He entered two classrooms of first-graders.

Lanza murdered all 14 students in the class as well as the substitute teacher; in the other classroom, Lanza killed six students.

Police were called to the school at 9:35 a.m., but when the police finally found the gunman, he had already killed himself.

Following the Sandy Hook Shooting, foundations to remember the victims and promote school shooting were founded. These foundations include Sandy Hook Promise, which was founded by family members of those killed in the school.

According to the foundation’s website, “From the moment [the foundation] was formed, the goal was to create an organization for family members, if they chose, to have a platform to lead the change they wanted to see so that no other parent experiences the senseless, horrific loss of their child.”

The foundation has continued to work to fight for safety in schools through a variety of medium. These mechanisms include advertisements on television, including “The Other Side,” which was created in the wake of the latest school shooting.

The Latest Tragedy Once again, on Feb. 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and faculty members and injured 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Before the shooting, Parkland was a safe and often unheard of town, according to Christy Ma, a senior at Stoneman Douglas.

Cruz, who was previously expelled from

“

THE FIRST THING THAT I AM THINKING IS THAT IT HAS TO BE A SENIOR PRANK BECAUSE WE WERE ABOUT A MONTH AWAY FROM THE SENIORS GRADUATING, SO I RAN OUT OF MY OFFICE AND MY WORST NIGHTMARE BECAME A REALITY." FRANK DEANGELIS

Stoneman Douglas, arrived at the campus by Uber at 2:19 p.m. After reports of the first gunshots in the campus’ freshman building at 2:21 p.m., the school went into their Code Red, or lockdown procedure.

Cruz, however, reversed the procedure by setting off a fire alarm. Fearful of being caught in a fire, students and faculty fled from the locked down rooms into the hallways where the gunman could easily harm them. Within the next six minutes, Cruz killed 17 people and wounded 17 more.

After the massacre at Douglas, shock was overwhelmingly felt in Parkland. Ma reflected that because of how safe, quiet and affluent that suburb was known to be, no one could have expected such tragedy to occur.

“I think we were mostly in shock at first.

Of all places, why Parkland? The way everyone grieves is a little different. Some people shut themselves off and wouldn’t talk. A lot of my friends were very open about it... For a lot of us, being with other people who witnessed the tragedy firsthand [was the most comforting thing],” she said.

Another common way of grieving for these students is advocating for stronger gun control laws, since that is often believed to be the root of the cause behind school shootings. Students from Stoneman Douglas created the Never Again Movement in the aftermath of the shooting and have since organized nationwide walkouts and marches to support their cause.

What differentiates the Parkland shooting from others is that the students refuse to let the conversation regarding increased gun control die.

Ma acknowledged that the school’s culture of supporting student activism has helped the student body trust in their voice and advocate for their peers across the country. “[The activism from the students] is not very surprising. Our school has always taught us to be unique individuals and speak out for what we believe in.” Ma said. “Douglas is a breeding ground for activism and world leaders, and I’m proud of my school for that.”

Student activists from Parkland have appeared on national television and written in publications like the New York Times, The Post, The Guardian and USA Today to voice their opinions about gun control.

Most notably, the founders of the Never Again Movement Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind, Sophie Whitney, Emma González and Delaney Tarr spoke at rallies and gained momentum for the movement over social media.

The Never Again movement twitter, now with a changed username of @rate4ourlives, has over 198,000 followers.

The Never Again movement arranged an official march, The March for our Lives, that took place on March 24. Over 800,000 people attended the gathering in Washington D.C., making this march the largest single day march in United States history.

While the majority of high school students were not alive to witness the Columbine shooting 19 years ago, its legacy has clearly affected students’ lives. Growing up in a generation where lockdown and active shooter drills are standard protocol, students and gun control activists alike all want to prevent more tragedies like the Columbine and Parkland shootings from happening in the future. Now, the politicians must listen to these recommedations and decide how to respond.

7

Protesters at the Dallas March for Our Lives on March 24. An estimated 5000 people marched downtown in response to the Valentine’s Day Parkland shooting.

Photo by Lauren Puplampu

The Parkland Effect When the fire alarm at Stoneman Douglas High School went off for the second time on Feb. 14, almost nobody realized what it signalized. As most students stood staring at each other with confusion, they heard the ear-piercing sounds of gunshots.

The shooter, 19-year-old former Stoneman Douglas High School student Nikolas Cruz, began firing indiscriminately at the students and teachers. Within only six minutes, 17 people were killed, and 17 others were injured.

Michelle Chen, Staff Writer, and Emily Wu, Staff Writer

S

After murdering his former schoolmates and teachers, Cruz was arrested and put into custody. The injured victims were rushed to the hospital. But the disastrous Thursday did not end with the cease of gunshots. In the wake of the tragic shooting, both pro- and anti-gun control forces rallied to promote their agenda, sparking a nationwide conversation on the role of guns in today’s society.

Youth Activism Four days after Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the student activist movement already had a name: Never Again.

The Never Again movement was co-founded

by Parkland survivors and students Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind and Sofie Whitney. The group advocates for stricter gun laws to prevent gun violence. Also part of the movement are prominent student activists survivors David Hogg and Emma González.

These student activists spoke out almost immediately after the shooting, calling for state and national action against gun violence. Hogg appeared on national news the morning after the tragedy demanding action. That night, Kasky used the hashtag “#NeverAgain” for the first time on social media.

Three days after the tragedy, Emma González delivered her “We Call B.S.” speech at a gun-control rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that went viral.

“They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS,” González said in her speech.

Parkland survivor Christy Ma believes that activism has become an outlet for students to channel their grief. “We just can’t bear to see something like this happen again. That’s why so many students have taken upon ourselves to lead this movement,” Ma said to The Fourcast during an interview.

On March 24, Ma joined many of her classmates and other protesters at the March For Our Lives in Washington D.C. planned by Parkland student survivors. Emma González addressed the march in D.C. for less than two minutes before she fell silent, then the crowd began to chant “never again” while she stood on the podium with tears streaming down her face. After more than four minutes, she spoke again.

“Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds…Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job,” González said during her speech, breaking her silence.

On the same day, satellite marches were simultaneously held across the country, where protesters held up signs with hashtags “#EnoughIsEnough” and “NeverAgain.”

“It was incredible to see over 800,000 people show up to the D.C. march and being able to see that everywhere on the news that day was just marches across the nation,” Ma said.

In another act of youth activism, EMPOWER, the youth branch of the Women’s March, planned a National School Walkout in memorial of the Parkland shooting on March 14. According to the organization’s website, more than 2,500 school walkouts were planned across the nation that day. Another National School Walkout is scheduled for April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

As a result of the Parkland shooting, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America doubled their size in the month after the tragedy.

“After Parkland, the groundswell of support has been incredible. From February 14 to now, I’ve been working night and day bringing in new groups, new leaders, expanding our organization and our footprint across Texas. It’s been really different,” Lisa Epstein, Texas Chapter Leader for MDA said.

Texas Gun Sense, a non-profit that advocates for gun-control policies, also noticed that more people have joined the organization’s email list since the Parkland shooting, and there has

8 been “more traffic on Facebook,” according to Gyl Switzer, Executive Director of Texas Gun Sense.

Now, both organizations are planning to work with student activists. Switzer believes that in the past, organizations have not been the most active in reaching out to students and neither of the groups fully understood each other, but the climate after the Florida shooting creates an opening for cooperation between youth and adult activists.

“Working together, if we can do it more, is hand in glove with our strength and weaknesses. I hope that we can make that happen,” Switzer said.

After the Parkland shooting, Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have launched a new initiative called “Students Demand Action.”

The new campaign is run by student volunteers who organize sit-ins and town halls.

Epstein hopes that under Students Demand Action, students can continue their activism in directions they feel is right to them. “They’re doing a great job. They’ve made America proud,” Epstein said.

Nevertheless, when students activists and private organizations are advocating for a change to prevent another Parkland, the political responses are, in comparison, less active and united. Although Florida state lawmakers did pass legislation which raised the minimum age to purchase guns and provided financial support to school security financially, major changes such as imposing stricter restriction on gun purchasing did not happen.

The Road Ahead Although many advocat for stricter gun control, some organizations suggest a different approach to school safety. Alice Tripp, a lobbyist for the Texas State Rifle Association, warns that increased legislation will not have a significant impact on gun violence in schools.

“My way of looking at tragedies involving a firearm is to review the root cause. I have never found similarity in the criminal, assigned blame to the tool, or found a law missing that could possibly have stopped the incident.” Tripp said.

According to Tripp, the membership of TSRA increased after Parkland shooting, and the shooting does lead to changes and improvements in the local legislation systems.

“Everyone began looking at how to tighten security: meaning the shape and configuration of school campuses, self locking doors, communication with the office and with law enforcement, and adult awareness was heightened. If law enforcement was not available nearby, Texas law already allowed school boards, in input from parents and faculty, to allow staff with a handgun license to carry in the classroom.” Tripp suggested.

Unlike the majority that is pushing towards the reduce use of guns and even the banning of firearms, Texas State Rifle Association is taking an alternative path while pushing changes to happen.

“We consider a firearm to be an option of last resort for personal protection, coming after doors, lights, communication, locks... and a general overall safety plan for anyone, any place, any time but most certainly for schools,” Tripp said.

As an increasing number of student activists symbolizes the raising awareness of the student community, more attention were brought to both gun restricting and school security rules. The shooting caused more politicians to bring this issue to the discussion table.

Will these politicians actually make tangible changes to American gun policy?

We will have to wait and see.

School Shootings By the Numbers In order to better understand the gravity of the school shooting epidemic, The Fourcast has compiled data regarding the various aspects of school safety.

Niamh McKinney, Staff Writer, and Eugene Seong, Staff Writer

9/10 of public schools in the U.S. have active shooter drills

24%

Increase of students who reported a police or security presence on campus from 1999 to 2015 Age Demographics of School Shooters, 2013-2015

By minors: 56%

Mass Shootings by Gender from 1982 to 2018

By adults: 44%

5

The number of minutes the average school shooting in the U.S. lasts U.S. Public High Schools With Metal Detectors

Without: 89%

2

men women

With: 11%

How many school shootings occurred in K-12 schools per month in the United States

Sources: campussafetymagazine.com, nces.edu.gov, statista.com, washingtonpost.com

9

The New Normal and How to Handle Challenging Conversations

Hockaday's Standard Protocol for Active Shooters With more conversations about school shootings, many institutions have reexamined their active shooter policies. The Fourcast spoke with Hockaday's Director of Safety and Security Karyn McCoy to learn more about the school's emergency procedure.

In light of the recent school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, elementary, middle and high schools across the nation have struggled with how to discuss school shootings and violence on campus.

Amelia Brown, Sports & Health Editor

O

On Feb. 14 senior Anden Suarez watched as her phone buzzed with dozens of CNN notifications with the news of the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In the moments following the school shooting, Suarez, like many of her classmates, stood in disbelief that a tragedy like this had happened again.

In the past five years, there have been more than 300 school shootings in the US. Enraged by this statistic, thousands of students of all ages have started to use their voices and join the movement to initiate change.

Within the Hockaday community, Upper School students had an opportunity to use their voices during the community conversations held on Feb 22. Suarez felt that these conversations gave students an opportunity to process and talk through the Parkland tragedy.

“It was really inspiring but didn’t want it to be the last conversation we had,” Suarez said.

Suarez helped assemble a team of seven Hockaday students and four faculty members to talk to Eugene McDermott Headmistress Dr. Karen Warren Coleman about furthering the conversation on gun violence and fueling action.

“We wanted to ally the student body and administration,” Suarez said. “I felt that the shootings were heavy on hearts and minds of Hockaday students and a lot of people are fed up with getting these CNN notifications on their phone.”

After further discussions, Suarez and her team planned for the Hockaday community to convene for 17 minutes of silence on March 23 to memorialize the lives lost in Parkland. The team also planned a "call to action" event on April 20 to teach students about how they can make a difference.

“If we empower students to participate in this movement there will be no limit on how far their opinions and voices can go,” Suarez said. “I hope students see this as an example that it does not matter that you are in high school. Students are doing tangible things that are affecting the dialogue in Congress.”

Middle and Lower School faculty and administrators have also taken efforts to remove some of the weight from student’s shoulders through different forms of conversation.

Head of Middle School Linda Kramer has focused on keeping these conversations age appropriate. With younger students, Kramer believes that although a lot of them have not had many conversations about gun violence, the pro-

gram Cornerstones Studies, in which advisories discuss how to engage in healthy communication and handle various dilemmas, teaches them how to navigate serious discussions.

“Cornerstones is a way for students to respectfully share their voice and say things that people might disagree with,” Kramer said. “It’s about being brave and courageous and it builds the skills so they can talk about how they feel.”

Kramer believes that, with high school around the corner, eighth grade students should have the opportunity to participate in a more in-depth and specific conversations about gun violence in schools. Director of Service Learning Laura Day and Middle School counselor Rachel Innerarity plan on opening a dialogue to prepare these students for having similar conversations next year.

“I feel a responsibility to prepare the eighth graders for the experiences may have in high school by giving them more opportunities to have an opinion and share that opinion,” Kramer said.

Similarly, Lower School students are given a chance to share their opinions and start conversations during class meetings. Lower School counselor Susan Hawthorne travels to every class once every six day rotation to talk to students for about 40 minutes about anything on their minds. She found that when students bring up topics related to guns, they often wonder about their safety.

“As far as talking to young kids about the violence that is occurring in our schools and country, they need to be reassured that they are safe,” Hawthorne said.

But Hawthorne believes that many Lower School students do not have the emotional maturity to understand things like active shooters and death, and she believes that exposure to social media and the adults in their lives makes them relatively aware of what’s happening.

“They can’t escape hearing a lot of stuff that happens in this country but I don’t think they process it,” Hawthorne said. “Pre-kindergarten through third grade student can’t process the permanence of death.”

Hawthorne has found that older students bring up more complex issues, and she aims to bring their attention to the impact they can have if they use their voice.

“I told a fourth grade class recently that ‘those of you who are 10 will be able to vote in eight years,” Hawthorne said. “They will be able to join students that are protesting and bring awareness to government.”

Q: How does Hockaday prepare for a threat like an active shooter on campus?

A: Training is provided for faculty and staff to address Crisis Incidents; this includes the possibility of an active shooter. We address the best practices that are being used to ensure that we do what we can to deter potential intruders.

Q: What is the security protocol if a shooter (or similar threat) is on campus?

A: We implement the Lockdown protocols.

SRPs are in each classroom; they explain our lockdown and other emergency protocols.

Q: Have any security protocols changed in response to the recent school shootings?

A: No, after we reviewed what we currently are doing we concluded that we had already implemented the best practices.

Q: Anything else you would like to add about Hockaday's security?

A: The cameras and access control are tools that the Security Team uses as a good deterrent for potential intruders.

Hockaday's Emergency Protocol 1. Locks, Lights, Out of Sight: When the alarm sounds, all exterior and interior doors are locked. In each individual classroom, teachers lock their doors, close the blinds, turn off the lights and tell the students to hide in a location that cannot be seen from the hallway.

2. Silence: Students and teachers must remain quite. No cell phone usage is allowed.

3. Lock the Door At All Times: If anyone attempts to enter the classroom, do not open the door. The door must remain locked at all times for the safety of the students and faculty members.

4. Keep Your Hands Visible: If the students are forced to evacuate the building, all students must keep their hands at all times.

This procedure ensures that the security team knows who is in possession of a weapon.

5. Do Not Enter the Building: Individuals who are outside the building when the alarm goes off should not attempt to enter the building. Instead, they should evacuate campus and head for a safe location.

10

Trump Wants to Arm Teachers.

Walder Responds.

There has been a great deal of discussion regarding the cost and moral implications of arming teachers, but one very important aspect being left out of the discussion around arming teachers is that teachers are not trained in situational awareness. It is not hard to learn how to shoot a gun; I do not doubt that most teachers could learn how to do so with a few full days of professional development. What takes far longer, is training people how to respond to an active shooter scenario.

Tracy Walder, Upper School History Teacher

A

As a former operations officer at the CIA and former Special Agent at the FBI, I have had extensive situational training, and I am confident in my abilities to run towards a violent situation rather than away from it.

Asking teachers to carry weapons and just assuming they will be automatically prepared for a situation like this is ridiculous. My training at both the CIA’s “Farm” and FBI’s, Quantico was rife with high pressure scenarios, the point of them being, to work with a phenomenon known as fear extinction.

Hockaday neuroscience teacher Dr. Katie Croft describes fear extinction as a phenomenon “where you can lower the fear response after multiple non-reinforced exposures to a feared conditioned stimulus." She further stated that this “would have to be done on a case by case basis in order to train people to dampen their pre-conditioned fear response to an active shooter scenario.”

My training at Quantico and the Farm required me to crash cars at high speeds, drive into unknown situations where I was fired on with sim-munition rounds, be held hostage, be dropped from a helicopter into a forest and forced to navigate my way back, be punched, kicked, fired on and cursed at by professional actors, and much more. All of this was in an effort to promote fear extinction amongst me and my classmates.

A Washington Post/ABC poll, stated that 42 percent of Americans believe “gun-bearing teachers could have deterred last week's school shootings in Parkland, Fla." This statistic is alarmingly high to me. It indicates that Americans think that carrying a gun, and running towards an active shooter is easy; yet, the US Navy SEALS website states that 75 percent of recruits drop out of the training because they fail to adopt the survival mindset, and were not mentally prepared for the emotional and physical stress of training. Essentially, they were unsuccessful at fear extinction.

Additionally, much has been made of the school resource officer who did not enter the building during the Parkland shooting. Though it is easy to call him a coward, I argue that he was doing what he was trained for. The Broward County Police Department trained the officer to “seek cover and assess the situation in order to communicate what one observes to other law enforcement”; this is precisely what that officer did.

That’s what he was trained to do.

Rather than arming teachers, perhaps we need to look at how our police officers are trained.

The training received at police academies is left up to the states. Some state programs offer a section of “mental toughness training” in their programs; some do not. According to the program guide for the Broward County Policy academy, there is not a section of the training dedicated to situational awareness, mental toughness or fear extinction.

This type of training allowed me to be shot at, chased and punched in the field, and then to react in a calm, logical and purposeful manner. It was my job to take a bullet if the situation called for that; I knew this, and it was what I had willing-

ly signed up for. Due to my training, I have no doubt that I would take a bullet for my students; however, I feel it is ridiculous that I am having to have this conversation as a teacher.

President Donald Trump stated, that “10 to 40 percent of teachers are very gun adept”.

There are two significant issues with the President’s argument: how adeptness is measured and whether teachers actually want to be armed.

First, there is no data to support the president’s claim that up to 40 percent of teachers are gun adept, but the larger issue is that Trump sees gun adeptness as the measure upon which we should arm teachers. Those who support arming teachers do so partly because society tend to measure adeptness or proficiency in tangible ways. In weapons training, this would equate to how well you can hit a target and how fast you can unload your weapon.

I do not doubt that if adeptness was measure in this way, many teachers could be armed.

What fails to be taken into account is the emotional and psychological adeptness that comes with being armed and being thrust into an active shooter situation.

Secondly, a recent Gallup poll indicated that only seven percent of teachers would want to carry a gun in their classroom, 15 percent wanted more armed guards and bulletproof doors and windows in their classrooms and 73 percent opposed training teachers and staff to carry guns in school. This statistic indicated that if teachers were to be armed, it would be, for the most part, against their will.

Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association stated that arming teachers is “a bad idea. It’s always been a bad idea, and it will stay a bad idea. Teachers are there to teach, and they will protect their kids as the teachers did their best to do in Florida. Steps need to be taken to reduce the number of guns floating around in hands of wrong people. Guns in the hands of teachers are not the solution. It’s a cop-out.”

Arming teachers is not a new discussion; in fact, some schools have been arming teachers well before Parkland. According to the Giffords Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 18 states allow adults with carry permits to be armed on campus so long as they get proper approval from school officials. Of 1200 public school districts in Texas, 110 have armed teachers and administrators. Officials will not disclose exactly how many of these educators actually bring guns to school, as that number has been deemed confidential for security purposes. The legislation that led to the arming of these districts was HB 1009. Passed by the 83rd legislature, it allows “public school districts and open enrollment charter schools to appoint School Marshals."

Shortly thereafter, the 85th legislature passed HB 867, which allowed private schools to appoint School Marshals. Per the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, “the sole purpose of a School Marshal is to prevent the act of murder or serious bodily injury on school premises, and act only as defined by the written regulations adopted by the School Board/Governing Body.” Once a school has made an application to the TCLE,

11

the Commission requires that the institution must send the candidate to an 80 hour training course, conducted by a law enforcement academy that specifically provides the school marshal curriculum. Among the topics covered in the School Marshal course are physical security, improving the security of the campus, use of force, active shooter response and weapon proficiency.

Texas' school marshal law doesn't actually allow teachers to keep guns on their persons. Any school marshal that has routine, regular contact with students must keep his or her firearm locked up on campus but accessible. Educators in the program are trained in decision-making skills, violence prevention, legal issues related to the duties of a peace officer, and even active-shooter scenarios.

The 80 hours of training also includes timed shooting exercises at various distances. This is the equivalent of 10 work days for a teacher, not nearly enough to train them in situational awareness. A quick calculation of my hours spent at the CIA and FBI training academies works out to 2350 and 1904 hours respectively. I have had 4254 hours of training in weapons handing, fear extinction and situational awareness.

Aside from the training involved, there are practical questions that need to be answered such as what happens if and when a teacher's gun is left unlocked or is stolen or gets wrestled away from a teacher by a disturbed student? Would giving guns to teachers make students feel safer — or even more on guard, when they should be open to learning?

Recent stories regarding armed teachers support the argument against arming them. A high school teacher in Georgia barricaded himself in his classroom and fired a shot through his window. In California, a teacher accidentally fired his gun during a lecture on public safety and awareness. The weapon went off when the teacher was attempting to ensure his service weapon was safe and free of bullets.

Most importantly, some feel that the discussion surrounding arming teachers masks what the real problem is: what guns should be available for public consumption. Assistant Principal Joel Myrik,stopped a school shooter at his school in Mississippi in 1997 with his Colt revolver; however, he is now at the forefront of the argument against arming teachers. Recently, he stated to the New York Times, that the real issue should be common sense control, not placing an undue burden on teachers. Myrik stated that if the shooter at his school “had an AR-15, he probably would have killed twenty people instead of two…. there is not a soul on the planet who needs an AR15, except the military.”

When I left my job at the FBI, never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be having a discussion with my students and colleagues regarding arming teachers. As a law enforcement officer, it was my job to protect citizens; as an operations officer, it was my job to protect human assets. Being armed helped my ability to do that.

As a teacher it is my job to educate students, enable them to become critical thinkers and, hopefully, help them achieve their dreams. Carrying a gun does not help me do any of these things.

Standing in her classroom, Walder poses in front of a photo taken during her CIA tenure. Armed with an AK-47, Walder served in the anti-terrorism unit in the CIA .

12

How the Gun Has Ruled America Since 1776 In the wake of the Parkland shooting that claimed 17 lives on Feb. 14, Americans look inward and reflect on our country, our culture and the American mindset. We often tend to forget, however, that guns are ingrained into our very American values and define what it means to be a citizen of this great country for many Americans.

Charlotte Dross, Staff Writer, and Paige Halverson, Castoff Editor

E

Ever since the birth of the United States on July 4, 1776, certain ideals have consistently governed our society, independence being one of them. Prior to 1776, America existed simply as 13 colonies, ruled by a distant, overseas country. The United States was born only after a bloody revolution took place in order to claim our autonomy from Britain.

Upper School history teacher Elizabeth Bennett recognizes the prominent role that firearms have played and continue to play in our society.

“The ability to own guns seems to be something that many people equate with their freedom as Americans,” Bennett said.

When the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, it reflected the rapidly developing American gun culture. The Second Amendment stated, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Essentially, the right to own guns is enshrined in our Constitution.

Because of the vague language which the Founders used, the Amendment left some room for interpretation. Two conflicting opinions have emerged: those who believe that the ability to carry guns should be left to groups strictly organized by state governments, such as militias, and those who interpret the Amendment as allowing all individuals to carry guns. Elizabeth Bennett, Upper School History teacher, recognizes the debate over gun control resulted from the varying interpretations of the Second Amendment.

“We are grappling as a country right now with what the limits of the right [to own guns] are.

That seems to be the focus of the debate around the Second Amendment, and how the Supreme Court has interpreted that right as the ability of individuals to own guns,” Bennett said.

Despite the ongoing debate about gun control, it is an undeniable fact that guns have deep-seated roots within our country. They date back even farther than the founding of this country. In some states, early settlers were required to own a gun to help strengthen their collective defense. This ultimately prompted violence not only between colonists and Native Americans, but amongst colonists as well.

Because American gun culture dates back to the pre-Revolutionary War era, guns have deep-seated roots within our history. Although we are no longer struggling to gain our recognition

as a country, for many Americans, guns represent a sense of freedom; much like the colonists used firearms as a vehicle in which they were able to release themselves from the British regime. For them, the possession of guns ultimately ensured that Americans would be able to resist threats of a tyrannical government in the future.

From this point forward, the right to own and bear arms continued to dictate the actions of Americans. Gun ownership fostered the idea of “rugged individualism” within citizens. Originally coined by President Herbert Hoover during the nadir of the Great Depression, around 1932, the term refers to the idea that individuals should be able to forge a life for themselves without aid from the government. The gun helped early Americans forge their own lives, as the weapon served not only as a device of protection but a means by which to obtain food as well.

Dr. Chuck Walts, Hockaday’s Director of Debate & Forensics, elaborated on the persisting role that guns play within American culture.

"Our gun culture is pretty unique in the sense that we might be the only, if one of very few, where the ability to own a gun is enumerated right in our founding documents,” Walts said. “Because of that, it feeds into part of the American psyche about self-reliance and the Horatio-Alger-type of attitude about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. These elements of the American psyche feed into the idea that a gun is critical to fulfilling what it means to be American.”

Today, as we enter an age in which 17 school shootings had already occurred this year as of March 24, the Second Amendment has become a heavily-debated issue.

Nearly a century after the Second Amendment was ratified, this issue began to surface in the form of racial discrimination. In 1876, the case United States v. Cruikshank was taken to the Supreme Court, in which the Ku Klux Klan was barring African Americans from purchasing guns.

The court ruled that the Constitution did not give individuals the right to own guns and inhibited certain citizens from purchasing firearms.

For a long time after this, both the state and federal governments continued to intervene in laws concerning guns. For instance, in 1894, the case Miller v. Texas appeared before the Court, in which Miller sued the state of Texas for forbidding him to carry his concealed weapon.

However, the Court ruled that Miller’s handgun was in violation of the state law, as it had “no rea-

PERCENT OF AMERICANS WHO SAY THAT SOMEONE IN THEIR HOUSEHOLD OWNS A GUN ACCORDING TO A 2017 PEW RESEARCH POLL

14 sonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”, therefore coming to the conclusion that the Second Amendment did not apply to states.

Despite these rulings, the Supreme Court eventually changed its stance over a century later. In 2008, a police officer appeared before the Supreme Court arguing that the federal ban on handguns was unconstitutional. The Court ultimately agreed, ruling that the Second Amendment guaranteed gun -ownership to both individuals and militias. This decision marks the first time that the Supreme Court recognized the individual’s right to own a gun.

Guns Today As we take a look at the recent shootings in the last decade, whether at night clubs, concerts or schools, gun violence still shocks and upsets many Americans. However, guns continue to dictate our current government, society and morals, as seen by the NRA’s involvement in Congress.

“The NRA is an interest group, and like any other interest group, their role is to advance their cause, and they use the same tactics that any other interest group uses to put pressure on members of Congress,” Elizabeth Bennett said. “What makes an interest group powerful in many ways, however, is the support of the population. The NRA is powerful, and it does have a lot of money.”

Even though the NRA is tight-lipped about their exact membership numbers, their influence is undeniable.

“What makes an interest group powerful in many ways is the support of the population. They get a lot of individual donations,” Bennett said.

But, after recent shootings, like the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting and the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the NRA has faced severe backlash as the American population has raised its voice in dissent.

Modern public awareness to the relative lack of control over the sale and possession of firearms in America can arguably be drawn back to the plethora of assassinations and gun violence which swept the U.S. in the 1960s.

The most well-known act of gun violence of the decade would be the assassination of the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, in 1963. Kennedy’s death was followed by the assassination of the civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr, and then Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

With the abundance of gun violence, the U.S. Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968. This was one of the first times the U.S. government passed restrictions on firearms, and it responded to the needs and concerns of the public.

Not only did the Gun Control Act restrict the sale of firearms to convicted criminals, anyone ever committed to a mental institution and anyone convicted of domestic violence, it required all firearm dealers to become licensed. It was praised by many, such as the then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who stated, "Today we begin to disarm the criminal and the careless and the insane. All of our people who are deeply concerned in this country about law and order should hail this day."

Even with its success, it was heavily criticized

by U.S. government officials and the American public. It infuriated the NRA and they would continue to become more aggressive with their crusade against gun regulations, which is still strong today.

In response to the act, a new law was put

“

OUR GUN CULTURE IS PRETTY UNIQUE IN THE SENSE THAT WE MIGHT BE THE ONLY, IF ONE OF VERY FEW, WHERE THE ABILITY TO OWN A GUN IS ENUMERATED RIGHT IN OUR FOUNDING DOCUMENTS." CHUCK WALTS

into place, The Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986. It rolled back many of the penalties in the 1968 law and banned any federal agency from keeping a registry of guns and their owners.

Gun regulations would continue to be passed throughout the following decades.

In 1989, California banned the possession of semiautomatic assault weapons. In 1990, the Crime Control Act banned the manufacturing and importing semiautomatic assault weapons in the U.S. and created "gun-free school zones,” and in 1999, after the Columbine High School Shooting, the U.S. Senate passed a bill requiring trigger locks on all newly manufactured handguns and extending waiting period and background check requirements to sales of firearms at gun shows.

Recently, in the wake of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, leaving 17 teenagers dead, gun control has taken the forefront in today’s issues, and many question why Americans take so much pride in their guns.

For some Americans, though, it is not a question of why they love their guns, but why they need their guns. For instance, Kelly Brookbank, a receptionist at a dentistry practice in Richardson, owns a gun—and it is not for hunting a 10-point buck.

“I was a victim of domestic violence 20 years ago and the person who abused me was much bigger than me, so I had no way to protect myself, and the police can’t always assist you,” Brookbank said. “I own a gun for my protect and I was taught firearm safety through a class and my husband.”

Brookbank is not alone. A national survey

by Pew Research Center found that nearly half of gun owners own a gun is for protection. Around 32 percent state they have a gun primarily for hunting and even fewer cite other reasons, such as target shooting.

“The reason I started my firearm classes was for personal protection and since I am a parent, I want to be able protect my family,” Brookbank said. “I don't even want to have to use it.”

With current anti-gun sentiments in our country, today, 58 percent of gun owners worry that new laws would make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families, but in Brookbank’s opinion, laws have started to become more lenient.

“Texas has made it easier to own a gun with the new open carry laws,” Brookbank said. “You don’t have to have it concealed, if you have an open carry permit.”

But even with the recent rise of gun ownership and decline of regulations, many gun owners, go through a rigorous process to own their firearm or possess a permit, such as extensive firing range classes, permits and fingerprinting.

But even with the recent rise of gun ownership and decline of regulations, many gun owners, go through a rigorous process to own their firearm or possess a permit. With all these precautions in place and hurdles to jump, Brookbank has only one thing on her mind: her family.

“The reason I started my firearm classes was for personal protection and since I am a parent, I want to be able protect my family,” Brookbank said. “I don't even want to have to use it.”

Ultimately, as guns continue to circulate throughout the country, debate over the interpretation of the Second Amendment will continue.

Although this debate has not always been prevalent within society, in recent years the discussion has been brought to the national stage, and there it will continue to stay until a middle ground can be reached.

15

The Mental Illness Paradox

Then President Barack Obama, surrounded by victims of gun violence and their families, signed executive orders on Jan. 16, 2013, to prevent more school shootings following the violence at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Photo provided by The White House

Eight days after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, President Donald Trump referred to mass shooters, such as Nikolas Cruz, as “savage sicko[s]” in a tweet. As with similar events in the past, sentiments like Trump’s, which insinuate that mental illness is the driving force in these violent acts, have circulated following the Parkland shooting.

Ali Hurst, Copy Editor, and Eliana Goodman, Staff Writer

M

After instances of large-scale gun violence in the United States, politicians, pundits and average citizens alike are quick to try to identify a scapegoat, usually either guns or the mental health of the accused offender. A psychologist in private practice in Dallas, Avery Hoenig, Ph.D., disagrees with the notion that mental health is completely responsible for this harrowing violence.

“There’s that old adage of, ‘well, you’d have to be mentally ill to…’ and I think we’ve known for a long time that that doesn’t really hold any weight,” she said.

Senior Safa Michigan also opposes this common argument and believes mental health is often blamed for mass shootings in order to avoid a more difficult conversation.

“To blame these mass murders on mental illness doesn’t really achieve anything. The people that bring that up usually are trying to avoid talking about guns,” she said.

In accordance with both Hoenig’s and Michigan’s assertions, studies have shown that mental illness only plays a minuscule role in violent crimes.

According to a study by Jeffrey Swanson, a Duke University psychiatry professor, only four percent of gun violence and other violence is traceable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

Furthermore, the book “Gun Violence and Mental Illness” by James Knoll IV, M.D. and George Annas M.D., M.P.H. asserts that “mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent less than one percent of all yearly gun-related homicides.” These minute percentag-

es shows that while mental health has a role in mass shootings, other factors may also come into play in the execution of these lethal events.

Hoenig, who acknowledges the possible link between mental health and gun-related deaths, also believes that the weapon involved shares the culpability.

“I think that mental health and its coverage is absolutely a need we have in this country and does seem to be related. I think obviously, this access to assault rifles clearly plays a part and it ups the ante on how lethal these attacks are,” she said.

In fact, purchasing a gun, even with documented mental illness, is quite easy to do in the United States. Only those who have been forcibly committed to a mental hospital or deemed mentally incompetent by a court or government body are prohibited from procuring a firearm.

This information has to be stored in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, but states are not required to put other mental health records in this system by federal law.

In 2016, Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter, posted a video in which he cut his wrists while discussing his desire to purchase a firearm. He was recommended for and completed a psychiatric evaluation at Henderson Behavioral Health in South Florida. Crucial information such as this, however, is not required to be recorded in the database for background checks, and Cruz was still able to buy a gun.

In light of Cruz’s mental health history, along with the supposed mental illness of other past student shooters, a new hashtag arose after the Parkland shooting. The #WalkUpNotOut movement is

16 one that completely blames mental illness and social factors for mass shootings. It encourages students to “walk up” to seemingly lonely or sad classmates instead of staging walkouts in favor of gun control.

Isabelle Robinson, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times in response to the #WalkUpNotOut hashtag entitled “I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.”

Robinson argues that expecting students to alleviate their peers’ social struggles is an unfair proposition and insinuates that the victims are also to blame.

“It is not the obligation of children to befriend classmates who have demonstrated aggressive, unpredictable or violent tendencies,” she said. “It is the responsibility of the school administration and guidance department to seek out those students and get them the help that they need, even if it is extremely specialized attention that cannot be provided at the same institution.”

Hoenig, too, believes that mental health services in schools are lacking and should take more responsibility in caring for students and observing potentially dangerous behavior in students.

“We have a very clear protocol to follow when we feel that a child is being abused. We also know what to do when we feel that a child is a danger to themselves. We do not have a national standard of care when it comes to students that threaten violence in a school setting,” she said.

In addition to a lack of protocol in these precarious situations, many of America’s public schools lack the funding to hire a sufficient staff of counselors. Dallas Independent School District is no different. At Dallas’ W.T. White High School, 2,400 students rely on just five counselors, and at Hillcrest High School, 1,247 students have only three counselors with which they can meet.

Hoenig is aware of this dire need for change in the psychology departments of America’s schools but still believes that mental health is not the sole issue at hand.

“Some of the problem absolutely is a mental health concern, and we could fix it through funding, resources, education. But I think that that needs to be happening concurrent with gun control,” she said.

In addition to masking other possible contributing factors in mass shootings, blaming gun violence solely on mental illness adds to the existing stigma surrounding mental illness in the United States. Hoenig acknowledges that the issue of mental illness as it relates to gun violence tends to move destigmatizing conversations in the wrong direction.

“I think mental health as an entity, I think there are a lot of things that are going in the right direction there, but I think we’ve got a long way to go as far as providing mental health care for all of those in need and destigmatizing the mental health services in this country. Attaching this in such a negative way to mental health is not necessarily going to get us to where we want to be,” she said.

Michigan, too, agrees that discussions about mental illness specifically following instances of mass shootings only adds to the already poor public perception of the mentally ill. She hopes that through more knowledgeable conversations about mental health, the stigma will begin to fade.

“I think the most important thing to do is keep raising awareness because people fear what they don’t understand and people will use what they don’t understand as an excuse,” she said.

What Makes a School Shooter

I

In 1996, Congress passed an amendment that prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using money to “advocate or promote gun control” on the basis that the research was politically motivated.

Additionally, the CDC’s budget for spending on this type of research was lowered. Thus, verifiable statistics about characteristics of school shooters are hard to come by.

However, there are commonalities among school shooters that have been analyzed, and these researchers have focused both on how an adolescent’s environment affects their mental state as well as the behaviors common to school shooters.

A 2013 threat assessment produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation warns against creating a “checklist” of warning signs due to the fact that many nonviolent adolescents possess personality traits or behaviors on the list.

The FBI analyzed four aspects of a perceived threat: the personality of the student, family dynamics, school dynamics and the student’s role in those dynamics and social dynamics. However, the organization stresses that its findings represent trends in previous school shooters and should be considered only after a student has made a threat, rather than to predict violent behavior.

Columbine High School On April 20, 1999, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 15 people including themselves and wounding more than 20. They also placed bombs in the cafeteria, but the explosives failed to detonate.

The deeply troubled teens exhibited warning signs prior to the shooting. Klebold turned in an English assignment about an assassin who shoots down students and bombs the city. He also kept a journal with themes of depression, self-loathing and unrequited love that also detailed fantasies and plans for the massacre as well as drawings of weapons. Harris’ journals and website, which are published by school shooter databases and websites dedicated to the Columbine shooting, show a fascination with Charles Manson and Nazism as well as his extremely violent fantasies and plans for mass destruction, which included a hit list.

Santana High School Fifteen-year-old Charles Andrew Williams had just moved from Maryland when he went on a shooting rampage on March 5, 2001, at Santana High School in Santee, California, killing two and wounding 13.

According to interviews done by Time Magazine, after the lifelong struggle of his parents’ divorce, his close friend dying, befriending negative influences, drug abuse and other students bullying him, Williams faced emotional issues. Williams is now serving a sentence of 50 years to life in prison.

Virginia Tech On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, set the record for the deadliest shooting carried out by a single gunman in United States’ history when he shot and killed 32 people on Virginia Tech’s campus. The New York Times recorded that a fellow student had described Cho as a loner while a professor remembers his reputation as troubled. The co-director of Virginia Tech’s creative writing program, Lucinda Roy, advised Cho to seek counseling, according to NPR. Additionally, The Guardian reported that Cho had been accused twice of stalking female students in 2005 and photographed fellow female students’ bodies in class. Cho made suicidal remarks to his roommate that precipitated a stint in a psychiatric hospital, according to CNN. Although the hospital released him with the requirement of receiving therapy, Cho didn’t attend any court-ordered counseling sessions disclosed by The Washington Post.

Before the shooting, Cho bought two firearms, one from the internet and the other in person according to CBS News. In a video clip that he sent to the NBC News, which was received after the shooting, Cho ranted about being bullied and Christianity and characterized himself as a protector for the weak and defenseless.

Sandy Hook Elementary School Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 28 people - 20 first-grade students and six adults including his mother and himself - on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Growing up, Lanza’s mother brought her son to the gun range often; in 2009, Lanza’s parents divorced, but Lanza remained with his mother. His father moved away and hadn’t seen Lanza for two years before the shooting, according to ABC News.

In addition, ABC News also disclosed that Lanza underwent occupational and speech therapy as a student at Sandy hook after his diagnosis with sensory-integration disorder. Early on, signs showed that Lanza struggled with basic emotions, and teachers had seen Lanza as experiencing anti-social behavior.

In fifth grade, Lanza co-wrote a story titled “The Big Book of Granny,” which follows an old woman who deliberately kills with a gun stored in her cane, according to The New Yorker. Lanza’s story, a homemade novel with eight chapters, ended when Granny’s young grandchild shot her in the head. The story’s somewhat prophetic ending mirrors how Lanza inevitably shot his own mother in the head a decade after “The Big Book of Granny” was published.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School At 2:19 p.m. on Feb. 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where he subsequently killed 17 people with his semi-automatic rifle, in Parkland, Florida.

Adopted at birth, Cruz became destructive after his adoptive father died in 2004. Around the neighborhood, he appeared to be fascinated with torturing animals, stole his neighbors’ mail, vandalized property and often started fights with other children, according to the Washington Post.

Cruz also expressed a strong interest in guns.

Then, three months before the shooting, Cruz’s adoptive mother also passed away. Afterward, he lived with different relatives and friends up until the shooting.

After transferring between six schools within three years, Stoneman Douglas expelled Cruz for disciplinary reasons. Throughout his life, Cruz’s behavior indicated mental health issues when psychiatrists who recommended admitting him to a treatment center according to the Sun Sentinel.

Keep Calm and Carry On The average college student’s backpack contains pencils, textbooks, binders and probably a computer. At universities in Texas, however, it could contain a gun. When studying on campus, it would be impossible to know that a fellow student was carrying a gun without searching through his or hers personal belongings.

Ponette Kim, Staff Writer, and Kate Woodhouse, Staff Writer

A

As of May 2017, 10 states allow campus carry, including Texas. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 11, or the “campus carry” law, on June 1, 2015. According to the University of Texas at Austin’s webpage on campus carry, this law meant that “license holders may carry a concealed handgun throughout university campuses, starting Aug. 1, 2016.”

The first states to legalize campus carry were Colorado and Utah, in 2003 and 2004, respectively. This spurred a national debate about the legality of campus carry among students and teachers at universities, who wondered whether campus carry would make students safer or put them in more danger.

Concern about campus carry escalated following the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. Despite this, according to the National Conference of State Legislature, “at least 19 states introduced campus carry legislation in some regard” in 2013, and in 2014, “at least 14 states introduced similar legislation.” In 2015, Texas became the eighth state to allow individuals to carry concealed weapons on college campuses.

The premise behind campus carry is that it allows for personal protection in situations of danger.

Yet, a 2016 report conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that “campuses that allow guns are likely to have more shootings, homicides and suicides.” The report also found these policies are “unlikely to reduce mass shootings on campus.”

James Green, a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, recently attended the protest on March 24 at the Texas State Capitol. He protested against “gun rights, the involvement of special interest groups and the lack of restrictions on buying guns.” Yet he does not personally feel threatened by concealed carry, because he doesn’t know of anyone that carries a gun.

“Sometimes we joke about it, but mostly we don’t think about it too much,” Green said. “I thought there would be more prevalence, and sometimes there are signs in departments that say ‘no guns in here’. Most of my professors are against it.”

However, State Senator Royce West, who opposes open carry legislation, has “documented opposition by campus personnel including college instructors who fear for their safety in lecture halls and even in their offices where armed students would be able to visit unannounced and where there is little to no security in proximity should an incident with an upset student arise.”

Though Kelvin Bass, Legislative Aide to Senator West, has not compiled information regarding protests on college campuses, he recalls that there was “opposition expressed during the time campus carry was being debated, particularly at UT-Austin.”

Recently, due to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, debates about gun

violence and gun laws are being reignited, bolstered by nationwide protests headed by teenagers. According to CNN, as of press time, nine mass shootings have occurred since Parkland, and the gun reform movement is still going strong.

While it may seem that Texas would have some of the loosest gun laws in the country, that is not the case. Before Senate Bill 17 passed in 2015, Texas was one of six states – in addition to Washington D.C. – that prohibited open carry. As of January 1, 2016, Texas allows open carry of a handgun only with the possession of a concealed handgun license while 30 states do not require a permit. However, one can display a long gun, including assault rifles and shotguns, openly with no permit in Texas.

Ever since SB 17’s passing, open carry has been a very controversial issue. Senator West has received many emails from his constituents about the bill and continues to get them today. Senator West does not support the bill because almost all law enforcement officers oppose it. In a survey conducted by the Texas Police Chiefs Association, 143 of the 192 police chiefs that answered, or 74.48 percent, opposed the bill. Police officers believe open carry creates confusion when they respond to a scene where people reported gunfire.

“They said open carry would undo years of police training,” Bass said.

Supporters of open carry believe it is their Second Amendment right to display their guns in public. People have created many websites, such as Open Carry Texas and OpenCarry.org, to use as a platform and spread their support of “Constitutional Carry,” the right to carry guns exactly how it says in the Second Amendment.

“We believe laws restricting how firearms are kept or carried is an infringement to this right,” Open Carry Texas said in their mission.

State Senator Van Taylor echoes this sentiment. “The Declaration of Independence tells us that our rights come from God and we entrust those rights to government,” he said. “It is therefore the government's duty to protect these rights, not to take them away.”

Despite the concern about open carry, according to Senator West’s office, they have not linked any gun incidents to this issue even though they noticed that gun-related violence is on the rise. They also have not received any reports that open carry was an issue during a shooting.

Although there have been no incidents linked to open carry, many businesses in Texas have chosen to ban possession of a firearm, regardless of permits, within their establishments. Businesses from Hopdoddy Burger Bar to Whole Foods have put up a 30.07 sign, banning open carry on their premises.

Whataburger even banned open carry in all 824 locations. Establishments like IKEA and Jason’s Deli have taken it a step further and posted a 30.06 sign along with the 30.07 sign, which bans concealed carry and open carry.

GUNS BY THE NUMBERS Since the age of the Wild West, Texas has maintained a reputation as a gun-toting state, but how does this state compare to others?

2015

the year that the Texas Legislature passed laws allowing both open carry and concealed carry

900,000 Texas residents received a concealed carry license in 2015

45

states in the U.S. that permit some form of concealed carry

137%

the percent increase in gun purchases in Texas from 2000 to 2016

13x

the number of times less likely concealed carry holders are to commit a crime than the general population

Source: Texas Monthly

18

Actor Clint Eastwood, portraying Policeman Harry Callahan, holds up a gun in the 1971 action movie “Dirty Harry.”

Photo provided by Paul Townsend

Point and Shoot: Gun Violence in the Media Following a mass shooting, many critics are quick to point fingers at the media for promoting violence in film, television, music and video games. However, do these movies and songs reflect the realities of society or do they encourage further violent actions?

Shreya Gunukula, Views Editor, and Cheryl Hao, Web Editor

I

In the infamous scene from the 2008 thriller “Taken,” Bryan Mills, played by Liam Neeson, pulls out his government-issued gun and shoots his daughter’s kidnapper in the forehead with a perfect poker face. At the time of its release, tens of thousands of 13-year-olds watched the violence unfold on the screen. “Taken” is rated PG-13 even though the amount of violence is far more than many R-rated movies.

In fact, not only is the amount of gun violence in PG-13 movies greater than that in R-rated movies, but the amount of gun violence in PG-13 movies has also more than doubled since 1985, according to research done at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Hockaday film teacher Glenys Quick credits the increase in gun violence on the golden screen to the popularity of this violence among the international audience.

"Hollywood goes with violent movies because they know it is going to sell. Violence is an international language. Hollywood wants to sell to countries that are not English-speaking, and violence is something that is a common language," Quick said.

Furthermore, having violence in movies and TV is also a shortcut to “good” storytelling; many audience members crave a dramatic plot, and conflict is often the foundation of such plots.

Using violence to accentuate the conflict, in some people’s minds, makes the storyline better.

According to The Numbers, a data ana-

lytics site for the movie industry, 77 of the top 100 movies of 2018 so far have been drama, suspense or action/adventure, which tend to include violent scenes. Of these 77 movies, 31 are rated PG-13, meaning that the film industry is generating high volumes of often violent films for a younger audience.

Violence does not only appeal to movie-going audiences. In fact, violence is also a successful selling tool in books.

Dr. Sarah Traphagen, Upper School English teacher, created a new senior seminar class for the 2017-2018 school year called “Law and Crime in Literature.” In the class, students explore the realm of criminality, reading texts ranging from Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” to the victim impact statement of the 2015 State of California v. Brock Allen Turner case.

“Human beings are fascinated with other human beings who don’t abide by the law. When someone deviates from that, it’s very hard for us to understand why. It all boils down to that constant fascination of trying to understand what really is not understandable,” Traphagen said.

“That’s why in the media and in television, people are intrigued by watching shows like ‘Criminal Minds’ and ‘Law and Order SVU.’ Those shows help us process situations where people are dangerous, and they are held accountable for what they do.”

With a more intense film or book, however, comes graver consequences, especially in the way the violence is portrayed, according to psychologists.

Top 30 Grossing Films 1985 - 2013 Without Guns: 6%

With Guns: 94%

Top 100 Songs Billboard Chart Mention Guns: 16%

Don't Mention Guns: 84%

Source: billboard.com, Annenberg Public Policy Center,

19 In American movies, TV shows and books, some aspects of violence are curated, while others are simply not shown, resulting in a sanitized version of the incident and its aftermath. For example, many "Law and Order: Special Victims' Unit" episodes do not actually depict the violent act on screen, but rather they allude to the crime through shots of the crime scene.

Although American media tends to gloss over the brutality of crime, Japanese media favors depicting the blood and destruction and focuses on the suffering of the victim and his or her family.

Dr. Douglas A. Gentile, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University, believes that the way Japanese movies and TV shows depict violence helps audience members sympathize with the victim, which potentially abates any aggression in the viewer. As for the portrayal of violence in American media, Gentile believes otherwise.

"People don't scream in pain for hours, and we don't see the reaction of their families dealing with the aftermath of it and all these are things that are real about violence. When asked about how violent a TV show is, people usually base their rating on how much blood there is, instead of ‘is there an intent to harm,’” Gentile said.

Psychologists believe that the increase in violence in Hollywood is correlated with an increase in violent crimes.

The major effects of seeing violence on television as a child, as researched and reported by the American Psychological Association, are that children “may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others,” “may be more fearful of the world around them” and “may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others.”

Furthermore, research conducted since the 1980s by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann and Leonard Eron, found that children who watched a substantial amount of violence on TV between the ages of 7 and 10 showed higher levels of aggression when they became teenagers. By observing these children as they matured into adulthood, the psychologists found that the children who watched a lot of violent TV when they were 8 years old were more likely to be arrested than those who did not.

Lastly, the media’s presentation of violence can desensitize individuals to real-world violence and that, for some, watching violence eventually becomes enjoyable and does not bring about the normal anxiety that would be normal from seeing such imagery.

However, Lucio Benedetto, Upper School History teacher and film connoisseur, disagrees with this connection because of ambivalence in the scientific community.

“For every study that proves [a connection between film and real life violence], there are five that don’t and science is about reproducibility,” Benedetto said.

Benedetto cites his own historical evidence to prove that violent crimes are not related to the arts. While acknowledging an uptick in violence in film and mass media starting from the 1980s, he also points out a significant drop in crimes during the 1990s, which deviates from the trend.

“If there were a correlation, why don’t we see a consequential increase in violent crime with violent videos. Violent crimes have actually continually decreased since [the 1980s] which is hard to believe with all the school shootings,”

“

HUMAN BEINGS ARE FASCINATED WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS WHO DON’T ABIDE BY THE LAW. WHEN SOMEONE DEVIATES FROM THAT, IT’S VERY HARD FOR US TO UNDERSTAND WHY." SARAH TRAPHAGEN

Benedetto said.

He is careful to note that a decrease in crimes does not mean that the issue of gun violence has been solved, but rather, that violent movies, books, and music should not be blamed for crimes being committed. Looking back on history, Benedetto points out that politicians have a tendency of blaming the arts for disorder in the country.

In the 1920s, some critics attributed jazz music to causing juvenile delinquency. As the decades went on, rock and roll, hip hop and rap were all cited by politicians as the reason for criminal behavior. Tipper Gore, wife of former Vice President Al Gore, went as far as to lead the charge against rock and roll for being subversive and encouraging violence among youth.

Benedetto argues that the arts were never the cause for violence, and instead, violence has caused growth in the arts.

“Particularly the hip hop and rap that was reporting, in a sense, on the crime and gangster culture was decried as causing that culture instead of reflecting it. The way that politicians deal with things IRL [in real life] is to go after pop culture,” Benedetto said.

Traphagen echoes this statement by arguing that violence portrayed in the arts can often simply be a response to current events rather than an instigator for future crimes.

“It’s a reciprocal relationship. Literature influences people, and people and culture influence literature. Authors write about what is going on in their time period to work through some of the debates and unresolved issues,” Traphagen said.

With many people debating how the arts affect violence, schools are erring on the side of caution by leaving violence out of student produced work. Hockaday film teacher Glenys Quick, in preparation for the ISAS Arts Festival, has previewed films that will play in the festival showcases.

To ensure that the students’ films are appropriate, Quick follows the following ISAS Film guidelines: “To ensure that the content of entries remains appropriate and sensitive to a broad range of variables, each school’s Digital Cinema coordinator will be held responsible for vetting students’ entries. Offensive language, violence, sexual innuendos and/or ethnic or gender slurs will result in immediate cessation of a presentation,” the rules read.

Because what is considered “violence” is not further specified in the rulebook, it is left up to each schools’ film teacher to make that judgment. Quick is adamant about the absence of violence in Hockaday films.

“I don’t let the girls have a gun in their films, and I discourage them from including violence because there are so many good stories that can be told that don’t involve violence and definitely don’t involve guns,” Quick said.

Many agree that gun violence is not solely due to violence in films, but rather due to deeper socio-political issues that need to be resolved.

Benedetto urges the government to act on more tangible causes such as access to weapons, mental health initiatives and gun control legislation rather than wasting time looking for ways to censor artists.

“Debating pop culture is just a distraction from talking about real issues,” Benedetto said.

“We are debating a Quentin Tarantino movie while kids shoot each other to death in Chicago.”

20

Gun Legislation, Violence and Culture: A Global Perspective

Various countries’ laws have treated guns very differently as a result of diverse histories with and cultural perceptions of these deadly weapons. Accordingly, guns may play very different roles in the daily lives of citizens across the world. In this section, The Fourcast compares the severity of gun laws in Great Britain, Japan, Mexico and Nigeria and examines the extent to which gun-related violence has affected these four countries.

Emily Fuller, A&L Editor, and Elizabeth Guo, Managing Editor

G

Great Britain In 1987, Michael Ryan, a legal owner of two semi-automatic rifles and one handgun, opened fire in Hungerford, England, a market town in Berkshire, . Ryan shot 16 civilians before killing himself. This 1987 massacre led to the Firearms Amendment Act of 1988, which banned semi-automatic rifles for civilians and imposed stricter limits on magazine capacity in handguns in the UK. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a legal owner of four handguns, opened fire at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland. Hamilton killed 16 5and 6-year-olds and one teacher before killing himself. The Dunblane Massacre precipitated widespread outcry in the U.K., leading to the creation of the Snowdrop Campaign, a public movement that brought a 750,000 signature petition to Parliament to ban handguns. And, as a result, Parliament passed a ban on private ownership of handguns for all of mainland Britain and required shotgun owners to register their weapons.

But despite the fact that Great Britain has some of the world’s strictest gun regulations, mass shootings have not been completely eliminated. In 2010, a gunman killed 12 people in Cumbria, England. Nevertheless, the number of gun deaths in the U.K. is much lower than that in the U.S. England and Wales have a combined population 56 million and see about 50 to 60 gun-related deaths a year. For comparison, the United States has a population of around 325 million and saw more than 33,600 gun-related deaths in 2013.

According to junior Sophie Dawson, who lived in England until she was 10 years old and returned last summer to visit, general conversation about guns in the U.K. is not as open as it is in the U.S. “I was talking about this with some of my peers when I visited, and I noticed that kids from the U.S. seem more comfortable talking about guns. It’s something that’s up for debate,” Dawson said. “Whereas for people in the U.K. and generally in Europe, guns are generally off the table as a topic for conversation.”

Japan In 1958, the Japanese government passed an ordinance stating that “No person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords.”

Since this ordinance’s passing 60 years

ago, the Japanese government has allowed for some exceptions, but it has not abandoned its restrictive stance on gun possession.

For one, handguns are illegal for all civilians—only shotguns and air rifles are permitted for those who complete the required 13 steps.

Some of these include attending a one-day class, passing a written test, achieving at least 95 percent accuracy in a shooting range test, passing a mental-health evaluation administered by a hospital, passing an extensive background check—and then retaking the class and written test every three years.

Evidently, the intensity of Japan’s gun regulations differs drastically from those of the United States. Diana Newton, a professor of public policy at Southern Methodist University who practiced law in Tokyo, affirms that the two countries’ approaches to gun regulation stem from fundamental cultural differences.

“The Japanese culturally and legally do not have the equivalent of the Second Amendment, so they do not have a preconceived notion of gun ownership in their culture,” Newton said.

“This is a situation with a very law-abiding and authority-oriented society. Culturally, [the Japanese people] are very comfortable with trusting their government and allow the government to make decisions.”

In 2014, there were six gun-related deaths in Japan. That same year, there were 33,599 gun deaths in the United States. According to Newton, guns play absolutely no role in the everyday life of a Japanese citizen.

“Japan’s gun laws are very effective. Police sometimes carry guns, but [guns] are not something that play a role in society,” Newton said.

“As an American living in Japan, I noticed that there was this presumption that everyone in the US has and carries a gun.”

Mexico Since the most recent Mexican Constitution in 1917, it is codified in law through Article 10 that some semiautomatic pistols, revolvers and rifles are only permitted in homes.

Upper School Spanish Teacher Alejandra Suárez, who grew up in Mexico City did not experience the presence of guns on an everyday basis.

“I did not know who had guns growing up.

It was primarily body guards and police officers that carried guns legally,” Suárez said.

There is no absence of licensed gun own-

International vs US Gun Ownership and Violence Mass shootings since 1966: 69% Guns purchased per year: 44% Guns owned: 69%

Guns owned: 31% Guns purchased per year: 56%

World U.S.

Mass shootings since 1966: 31%

USA vs UK Opinions on Expanding Gun Control Americans against: 35%

Americans in favor: 65%

UK against: 32%

Source: reuters.com, cnn.com, pewresearch.org

UK in favor: 68%

21

ership though. In 2007, when the Global Civilian Small Arms Stockpiles surveyed 178 countries, Mexico ranked seventh in the number of privately owned legal guns.

While there is some right to private ownership of firearms in the constitution, largely statute law restricts gun use. Article 10 of their constitution only permits ownership of rifles, shotguns and some handguns in the home. Also the nation’s only gun store, at an army base in Mexico City, tries to deter firearms from becoming an everyday part of life in Mexico.

This has not prevented the proliferation of high-caliber weapons in the country and the rise in murders committed by firearms. In the five year period between 2009 and 2014, 73,000 guns seized from Mexico were traced to have been illegally smuggled across the U.S.– Mexico border.

“The conversations around guns were always focused around cartel violence, not mass shootings,” Suárez said.

This being said, Suárez does not see Mexico’s restrictive gun laws as being the most effective though. Because their northern neighbors have 63,709 legal gun stores compared to Mexico’s one, studies have linked the less restrictive gun legislation in the United States with a rise of armed violence in Mexico.

Nigeria In Nigeria, individuals seeking to obtain a shotgun or handgun must acquire a background check for criminal, mental and addiction records, and the Firearms Act of 1990 states that citizens are not completely guaranteed the right to private ownership.

Over the eight years that senior Morenike Oni lived in Lagos, Nigeria, she perceived a difference in the presence of guns in her home country and in the United States.

“They are common where they are not supposed to be common. You don’t see military personnel or police officers on the road with firearms; you see them with batons,” Oni said.

But she said that hired bodyguards often carry firearms. Because of the corruption in the Nigerian government, Oni shares that policemen rarely carry firearms in the streets.

There is also a cultural contrast in public perception of gun ownership in the two countries in which she has lived.

“Almost everyone in Nigeria is against private ownership of guns,” Oni said. “From all that is going on in the country with Boko Haram coming in, there is a common consensus that guns create bad things.”

The numbers show this, too, that Nigerian citizens steer away from gun ownership. A study from the University of Sydney estimates that the rate of private gun ownership, both legal and elicit per 100 people in Nigeria is 1.5 and in the United States it is 101.05.

“Generally only rural-dwelling families that cannot afford to hire bodyguards would own guns,” Oni said.

Photographed here is one of the 63,709 legal gun stores in the United States. These stores make up to 60 percent of all gun sales while internet sales and gun shows comprise the remaining 40 percent of legal firearm sales, according to The New York Times.

Photo provided by Wikepedia

22

Killer of the American Dream When Yong and Joy Han immigrated from China to America in 1991, they did so because of this nation’s promise set forth in the Declaration of Independence: the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Aurelia Han, Editor in Chief

T

This nation from sea to shining sea was the place where my parents, Yong and Joy Han, would find excellent universities, jobs, friends and a home, where they would eventually raise two kids. A home to create a life practically from scratch and to start a new generation of Americans in our family.

This country is where they were confident that not only they but also their kids, my brother and I, would be guaranteed the absolute best shot at achieving our dreams.

That’s the dream for which they traveled thousands of miles, and that’s the dream that is torn and ripped away from them, me and every single person who lives in this country due to the violence from guns.

Since 2000, school shootings have occurred in 43 out of the 50 states and have left around 250 students and teachers dead, according to The Washington Post. Guns have become another school supply in backpacks and stored like textbooks and soccer cleats in lockers.

No one is safe from gun violence; it has become a reality for everyone. If you were to check the Facebook profiles of school shooting victims, the chances of you having mutual friends are highly likely.

Gun reform is not an option or a question, rather it’s a necessity. I love school; I love my school; I love to learn, and I never want to be afraid to do so. But, now I am, and things have to change.

As outlined by the National Student Walkout, Congress needs to ban assault weapons, require universal background checks for gun sales and allow courts to disarm those who display signs of violent behavior with a gun violence restraining order.

Assault-style weapons are meant for war and in high action movies-- not innocent kids in math class. High schoolers’ favorite video games are now playing out in their very own school hallways and classrooms. This time, there’s no extra lives and no restart button.

In a national survey conducted by researchers at Harvard and Northeastern University in 2017, 22 percent of current gun owners bought guns in the past two years without a background check. If airport security checks are required for every single passenger to ensure a person with malintentions does not get on a plane, universal background checks should ensure that a person with malintentions does not own a gun.

While some may doubt the efficacy of background checks, the federal system has stopped more than 2.4 million gun transactions since its start in 1994 as reported by The Guardian. However, the background check system needs to be expanded to private party sale

transactions, like those made at gun shows or online private servers.

It’s also essential that the courts have the power to remove guns from the hands of those with violent tendencies. However, even when some states do have proper policies to deal with this issue, law enforcement and legal authorities are not informed and sometimes even aware that they these processes exist.

In July 2016, a police officer in California, who believed a man was targeting local officials, called Santa Clara Deputy District Attorney Marisa McKeown to issue a gun violence restraining order. McKeown had no idea what he was talking about.

She had to first Google the term “gun violence restraining order” then research had to obtain one. When she filed the request, there was no process on how to handle those orders. Eventually, McKeown was successful in obtaining and order and the police confiscated seven weapons, including a scoped rifle.

These gun reforms need to happen now, and since government leaders won’t start the conversations and make the change, our generation will pick up the slack and do it ourselves.

Here’s the difference between those government leaders and student leaders from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the millions of students standing beside them: we aren’t going to wait. We’re not going to wait until we’re six feet tall, wearing suits and carrying briefcases. We don’t need degrees or PhDs to see that gun reform is absolutely crucial.

Unlike those politicians who will continue to wait to make change, to wait for another tragedy, to wait for the next set of kids to become victims then a statistic in a headline or a history textbook, we will fight to protect ourselves, our friends, our classmates, our teachers and our beloved schools.

We aren’t going to be in textbooks as numbers, like casualties lost at war. We will be the history makers and trailblazers. But we will also never forget and will always fight in honor of those whose lives were lost.

Politicians can make as many public statements of condolence, but they forget about the victims when they refuse to make change.

The amazing thing is my generation will be these history makers while wearing Converse shoes and ripped-up jeans. We might not understand how to file taxes or change a flat tire. Some of us can’t even buy lottery tickets or watch rated-R movies. We struggle in Calculus, we’re moody hormonal teenagers and we have messy rooms. Yet, we are the ones who will save lives and make the absolutely necessary gun reforms because never again will our friends have to die because of preventable gun violence. Never again.

On March 24, over 800,000 people marched on Washington and 18,000 people marched to the Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, to advocate for tighter gun control laws in collaboration with the March for Our Lives.

23

Embracing the Gray Area I’ve shot a gun before. It was a while ago, before my grandfather died, when he’d take my brother and I outside to shoot at a metal target or clay pigeons. The guns we shot were pistols and rifles, guns you had to cock between each shot, and reload with bullets after every 10 shots.

Charlsie Doan, President of Young Republicans

Y

You wore earplugs and headphones to protect your ears from the explosive crack that sounded when you pulled the trigger, and you held the gun with firm hands to control the kickback when you fired. You looked down the sight and aimed with your dominant eye, taking a few seconds to line up your shot. You always pointed the barrel at the sky if it wasn’t pointed at the target, unloaded or not, and you always gave it to an adult to lock up in the gun safe once you were done.

My dad grew up like this, shooting birds in rural New Mexico with pistols and hunting rifles.

He’s been a Republican his entire life too—a white, country-boy Republican who’s comfortable holding and using a gun for sport. Sound familiar? Kind of like the type of man who’s characterized in the media for being a gun-loving Trump supporter. I bet you think you know what his stance on guns is.

Yes, my dad voted for Trump. He also thinks assault rifles should be banned and gun ownership should require a background check. He knows that you don’t need an AR-15 to hunt deer or boar—if you do, as my brother said when I asked him about this, then “you’re a really bad hunter” and you probably shouldn’t be hunting anyway.

I agree with my dad. I am the president of Hockaday’s Young Republicans Club. I’ve shot a gun (and I’m not too bad at it). I believe with a burning passion that the government should not interfere with personal freedoms (this also means that I’m pro-choice, because that’s about as personal as you can get). But I don’t think that people should be able to own certain types of firearms.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, the revolver pistol didn’t exist, much less semiautomatic weapons. How could they have fathomed the weapons of destruction that would come after their time? Much of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is ambiguous and leaves room for interpretation; for example, the Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures, but the Founding Fathers left it up to future generations to decide what “unreasonable” meant.

Today the government needs probable cause and a search warrant, but they can still search through your house and your car. Do we consider that unconstitutional? No. In my opinion, reasonable, “common-sense gun legislation,” as it is so often referred to in the media, isn’t a violation of our constitutional rights either.

But I understand why some people might see it that way. And I don’t believe it’s because people truly want to keep their AR-15s—I think

it is a matter of principle. The government can seem like a somewhat bloated bureaucracy, filled with people who are paid to make decisions, carry out services, or, here’s the clincher, collect taxes from a place that is far removed from the majority of America.

It’s easy for resentment to build if you don’t feel like the government understands your needs and the way you live. If you feel this way, the idea of some entity foreign to you reaching into your life to take something away makes you angry. And today’s political climate tends to make people extremely defensive.

Even if you aren’t the proud owner of an AR-15, the anti-gun fervor sweeping the nation makes people like my dad, who consider guns simply a part of life, feel attacked. So I get why there is pushback, although I don’t necessarily agree with it.

However, I also don’t think that doing away with all guns is going to solve anything. For one, it would be almost impossible. Currently, the U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country in the world. Even if we instituted a mandatory government buy-back program like Australia did in 1996 and 2003, there is no way to ensure total compliance -- especially because the people who would be turning their guns in are the ones who use guns safely and responsibly in the first place.

The only firearms left would be either with law enforcement, stolen and in the possession of a thief at the very least, or on the black market.

That’s not really going to solve our problem. I think that if someone like Dylann Roof or Nikolas Cruz is truly determined to inflict harm, they will find a gun to do so.

So, after reading my arguments, would you say that I am pro-gun or anti-gun?

I think that I’m both, and I’m neither. Progun doesn’t have to mean you’re for every American owning an AR-15—because remember, an assault rifle is very different from the pistol I shoot with at my grandparents’ farm. And anti-gun doesn’t have to mean you want the U.S. to be a completely gun-free place—because guns are an irremovable part of American culture.

I think that’s the big problem with this whole debate; people fall too easily into the trap of black or white, right or wrong, and become so entrenched in their convictions that they begin to take disagreement personally. This makes it impossible to have real discussions, and even more impossible to make real change.

Here’s the deal: guns are not going away anytime soon. We need to stop digging our heels in on this issue and think in the gray area, the way my dad, a white man who grew up with guns and also doesn’t think that everyone should have one, does.