PD Editorial: Heed the rising voices of students: Enough is enough

Hundreds of thousands of students across the nation, including many from elementary, middle and high schools here in Sonoma County, joined forces in walking out of school Wednesday with a simple unified message: Enough is enough.

Enough with school shootings.

Enough with America’s preoccupation with guns and gun violence.

Enough with our nation’s dedication to a warped interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, one that not only envisions an unbridled right to own guns but defends the unholy proposition that all men and women are entitled access to military-style weapons that serve but one purpose - to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time.

And they do.

The most recent horrific example came on Feb. 14 when a young man who was not old enough to legally drink walked onto Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus in Florida and killed 17 people with an AR-15-style rifle he had purchased legally a year earlier. The purchase was completed despite the fact that the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, 19, who had been expelled from the school for fighting, was known to be a troubled young man.

His public defender described Cruz in court as a “broken child,” one who suffered from depression and brain-development problems. But the fact is, gun buyers in America are seldom rejected due to mental illness. According to research by USA Today, between 1998 and 2014 roughly 1.2 million of the background checks performed by the FBI resulted in a denial. But of those, a mere 1.4 percent were for reasons of mental health.

The Florida Legislature has responded by approving a number of reforms including raising the minimum age for gun sales to 21, creating a three-day waiting period for purchases and banning bump stocks which effectively convert semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons. But these modest changes don’t begin to go far enough. Other parts are a mindless waste, including a provision that would allow superintendents and sheriffs to arm school personnel.

Giving teachers guns is not the answer, as demonstrated by the debacle in Seaside Tuesday where a teacher, who also serves as a reserve police officer, accidentally fired a gun inside a high school classroom, injuring three students. The teacher was teaching a course on gun safety.

Legislation approved by the House on Wednesday creating “intervention teams” as well as training for school officials and students in preventing violence, also is no real solution. The problem is not training students to perform better in a crisis. The problem is keeping these kinds of weapons out of circulation and out of the hands of those who mean to cause widespread harm.

We stand with the students and their pleas for stronger action including a nationwide ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and an increase in funding for mental health programs in schools. Adults have ignored students and put them in harm’s way long enough.

It’s time to heed their cries for help - and for safety.