In the emotionally charged aftermath of school shootings, citizens often hear a distorted picture of how many such incidents occur and what may be done to stop them.
Strict regulation of firearms and strategic violence reduction initiatives are the only truly effective way of reducing the savagery and barbarity associated with guns. There have been 29 school shootings this year alone.
Three people were injured, one fatally, in a shooting at a pair of basketball games at Humboldt High School in Tennessee, on the same day that four students were killed and 7 people, including a teacher, were injured in a shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan.
One day earlier, a student shot and injured another student after a dispute about a gun sale at Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen, Arizona.
Two men were shot on November 26, in a parking lot at Westmont High School in Campbell, California, during a football game between two other high school teams.
On November 19, three students were shot and injured in the parking lot at Hinkley High School in Aurora, Colorado, the city where on July 20, 2012, a shooter entered a packed Aurora movie theater during the midnight showing of the “Dark Knight Rises” and began shooting, killing 12 people and an unborn baby. Another gunman in Aurora was seeking revenge after being fired from his job as a cook at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant when he killed four employees in a 1993 shooting.
Three Texas school shootings took place in October, when gunmen also injured victims at Phillips Academy High School in Chicago, Illinois, and Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The simple fact remains that arming teachers and spending money on increased school security may fuel ongoing debates but such schemes will do little about the problem of gun violence where our children are most vulnerable. Gun-related violence threatens our most fundamental human right, the right to life.
Easy access to firearms – whether legal or illegal – is one of the main drivers of gun violence.
The government has an obligation to maximize the protection of human rights, creating the safest possible environment for the most people, especially those considered to be at the greatest risk.
If a state does not exercise adequate control over the possession and use of firearms in the face of persistent gun violence, that could amount to a breach of their obligations under international human rights law. Our human rights are not protected if our leaders fail to tackle and stop gun violence and gun deaths.
That is why governments to use common-sense gun reform to stop gun violence.
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