Mar 6, 2018 2 min read

Correct failed policies now

I was a junior at Bentworth High School when the Columbine Massacre occurred. I remember being shocked. It didn’t make sense. We asked: why? Now, we simply ask, where?

This generation of high school students has never known a time when active shooter drills did not exist. Twenty years after Columbine, it seems normal for kids to practice crawling under desks or hiding in corners and closets while their teachers lock doors and unroll paper to cover windows. This is unheard of outside the U.S.

I teach in an international school. School shootings are difficult to explain to the global population here. Lately, I have fielded questions about American gun culture. One frequent line of questioning centers on why America is exceptional in having multiple school shootings with multiple casualties in multiple states over multiple decades.

Floridian teenagers are now saying enough! In so doing, they have shaken us from decades of normalizing school shootings. Children should not fear bullets at school, nor should doubting parents have to lie to their children and tell them they are safe at school.

Now is the time to correct failed policies related to security, guns, and mental health. We must seek truth to develop prudent public policy. Australians did this after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre – their last mass shooting. Britain took similar action following a massacre in Dunblane. The U.S. Congress did the opposite. In 1996, it ratified the NRA-supported Dickey Amendment barring studies of gun violence.

The “March for Our Lives” keeps this conversation alive and allows us to honor those who no longer are. For two decades, adults have failed. A new generation is rising and will soon be voting. It is time to support students on March 24.

Samuel J. Richards

Zurich, Switzerland