As we near the seventh anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida, I am reflecting on my role as a parent and educator and how I cannot ignore the possibility that a school shooting could happen where I work or where my children attend school. It is a tragedy that so many children, parents, and educators live with the daily fear of gun violence in American schools. While it’s easy to blame policymakers for our current state, we, the people, must also take some accountability. After all, it is our refusal to give up guns that leaves children unprotected. 

Last year alone, there were 39 school shootings. Then, just weeks into the new year, there was a shooting at a Nashville high school. More than 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School. However, efforts to reform gun laws have failed to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, or raise the minimum age to buy guns. In addition to facing obstacles while pushing for gun reform, some activists like Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg have been accused of being “race traitors” for pushing for progressive change. 

Let me explain. 

Former President Barack Obama received hell for his 2008 “cling to guns or religion” analysis regarding why he thought white working-class voters didn’t support Democrats. His comments were in reference to small towns in regions like the Midwest, where shuttered factories fueled economic anxieties and made people “bitter,” so “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” In 2015, he applied the same analysis to white Donald Trump voters.

Capitalism is an economic system based on exploiting the labor masses for the enrichment of the owning few. Many might be wondering: If capitalism is indeed the force to blame for our refusal to give up guns, why does gun control uniquely rile up white Americans? After all, it is African Americans who have been super-exploited in what professor and author Charisse Burden-Stelly calls “the U.S. Capitalist Racist State.” But as Cedric Robinson made clear in his book “Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition,” white people are also members of the laboring class who are heavily exploited in this system.

The problem is that whites accepted the racial bribe from white plutocrats that skin color should determine freedom, citizenship, and privileges. With that agreement came the responsibility to protect the new world order via the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. 

Most see the Second Amendment as the basis for personal gun ownership in America. However, it actually focuses on gun ownership in reference to militias and their ability to defend the security of the free state. What this really means is security from enslaved insurrection. According to the Constitution, the role of the militia was to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.

The only way to ensure that Black people stay in their place is with guns—and for that “right,” white Americans appear more than willing to allow generations of children to be terrorized.

Carol Anderson, author of “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” wrote that the language of the amendment was “crafted to ensure that slave owners could quickly crush any rebellion or resistance from those whom they’d enslaved.” From the first arrival of Haitian refugees to the appearance of the Black Panther Party on the steps of the California statehouse, white people have historically feared Black exertions of power and self-determination. Therefore, the only way to ensure that Black people stay in their place is with guns—and for that “right,” white Americans appear more than willing to allow generations of children to be terrorized.  

Rather than enact real solutions to stop the slaughter of children in American schools, we have decided to inject schools with more police. Not only does this not stop school shootings, it also exacerbates the already disproportionate disciplining of Black children in schools. It’s also worth noting that the police don’t have a duty to protect the public, including educators and students. In the case of Parkland, a judge declared that officers had no duty to protect the students. While the tide may be turning now that two officers face felony charges for abandoning or endangering a child for their inaction in 2022 during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, this hardly seems like justice after 21 children and educators were murdered. 

If meaningful gun regulation hinges on white Americans’ ability to wrestle with the nation’s historical sin of enslavement and their willful and continued agreement with plutocrats like Trump and Elon Musk to maintain the current societal setup, I see no out for us. There will only be more racism and xenophobia masquerading as citizens-rights populism. And meanwhile, more children will die. 

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor