Schools in Kansas are hit with threats of violence following a school shooting. Can our children survive? • Kansas reflector

Several weeks into the new school year, threats of violence are bubbling beneath the surface in Kansas schools.

You need to pay attention to the headlines that appear in different places and across a range of media. But simple searches reveal a wave of threats against K-12 schools, mostly as rumors spread on social media. Fortunately, nothing came of any of the threats, but they left families shaken and unsettled.

Kansas schools have been grappling with an epidemic of fear in recent weeks. And it shows little sign of letting up.

Here is an example:

These threats follow an actual shooting on September 4th at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Four people were killed and nine injured.

I don’t know what it says about our society that we seem to have to follow real horror and suffering with artificial trauma. But apparently we do. These false phone calls and online rumors are also taking a real toll — not just on schools and police officers who have to get to the bottom of every case, but also on students who have to deal with the ever-present threat of deadly violence in their schools.

That’s not how you learn. You can’t live like that. This is no way to prepare for a promising life.

Here in Lawrence, where I live and my son goes to school, the superintendent and local police chief even put together a video for students on the topic. I’m glad they’re taking the situation seriously, but I hate that we’re at this point.

Whenever we address this issue, especially when it involves guns, the right and the left argue about the causes. The right points to psychological problems in society, while the left points to the extreme abundance of weapons.

I think they’re both right.

Listen, abolishing guns would solve a lot of the problems (I’ve called for repealing the Second Amendment, as unlikely as that may be). But we also cannot ignore that the increase in weapons and the valorization of armed conflict in our culture has created generations of young people who see firepower as a way out of a problem. Video games, films and music reflect this reality. Given this cultural foundation, it is no wonder that people struggling with their mental health resort to lethal violence.

But we must be clear that the reality is that neither mental health will improve nor gun ownership will decrease. At least not in the foreseeable future.

I believe in the possibility of systemic change and in the ability of Kansans to make their cities, their state and their nation better. I still believe in that, fervently.

But I also know that it was three years ago when I wrote my first column on this topic, my first column as opinion editor at Kansas Reflector, and my son was still in elementary school. Now he is an eighth grader. Time passes quickly for parents and children, and before you know it, a generation’s school experience is colored by the possibility of gun violence.

Beyond that, real reassurance is impossible. These times force parents to lie to their children. We need to tell them that everything will be okay and that their schools and worlds will be safe from the madness of a mass shooter.

We don’t know that.

And we can’t say that.

To those in this city, state or nation who choose the right to bear arms over the right of children to live, shame on you. I hope you never, like me, have to experience children streaming out of an office, some of them wide-eyed and crying because we can’t protect them. I hope you never have to see a school turned into a blood-soaked battlefield – which, fortunately, wasn’t the case for me.

Children deserve a better school experience, free from such threats. Let us be worthy of them one day.

Clay Wirestone is opinion editor at Kansas Reflector. Kansas Reflector’s Opinion section works to amplify the voices of people affected by public policy or excluded from public debate. Here you will find information, including the opportunity to submit your own comment. Here.