Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) tweets, “For kids in America, fear of a school shooting is the second most common worry after bullying. This shouldn’t have to be the new normal.” He includes a Mother Jones video of children discussing their schools’ lockdown procedures.
I think it is fairly clear that Senator Murphy wants us to conclude that we should enact new restrictions on gun ownership to relieve these children’s fears. What I took away from his comment and the video was different: Maybe we ought to rethink lockdowns.
American schoolchildren are safe by historical standards and extremely unlikely to be involved in a mass shooting. Parents, teachers, and school administrators should strive to avoid giving a different impression, especially when that impression will cause those children needless anxiety. (Parents may want to consider just not telling young children about school shootings that have taken place far away, and turning off television accounts of them when they are present.) And this is true even if we believe that new gun restrictions are worth pursuing in order to make events that are already rare even rarer.