Guns, Kids and School, Part 9

“Campus Carry” and (Un)Intended Consequences?                     

 Scene 1:  Lecture hall in a public university in Texas

            White student enters, takes his seat and opens his backpack to take out his laptop.

When he reaches into the side pocket, he has to push a handgun aside to find the charger for his computer.

            The white girl on his left sees the gun and breathes a sigh of relief:  “I feel so much safer now…”

The African American girl on his right catches a glimpse of the gun and quietly scoots her chair a few inches farther away.  She doesn’t say much in class and tries not to be noticed.

Scene 2:   Crowded parking lot on the campus of a public university in Texas

African American student eases his car in to a narrow slot as students compete for scarce places in the rush to get to class.  As he lifts his backpack out of the car, a broken zipper leaves open to view his iPad and his handgun.

“911—black guy with gun.  I can’t tell what he’s going to do with it. This parking lot is crowded! He’s armed – he’s walking this way! Please – hurry!”

Welcome to “Campus Carry,” brought to you by the misguided Texas legislature and the gun lobby they report to.   White guy with gun a guardian of the peace? A patriot? A “real Texan”? Black kid with gun a danger to others? Black guy with a gun a "perceived threat"?

The law permitting guns on all public universities and colleges in Texas took effect on the anniversary of the saddest day in the history of higher education in Texas:  August 1, 2016, the 50^th anniversary of the “Tower Shooting,” the day an army veteran stepped out on the tower of the University of Texas at Austin and shot at anyone walking within his line of sight, killing 13 and wounding 30 others.  The cynical timing of the campus carry law was noted at UT and around the nation as another example of Texas craziness.

But this law is beyond crazy.  “Campus carry” is timed to intersect with two racially charged developments:  the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of affirmation action in university admissions in the Fisher case and the alarming increase in claims of the “stand your ground” defense used to justify violence – including shooting to kill – if the shooter perceives his or her victim to be a threat.

Let’s think about this convergence:  Just when the US Supreme Court has ruled definitively in support of increased racial and cultural diversity in ourpublic universities and their admissions policies,  our nation is plagued with shootings of unarmed African American boys and men.  And as we saw in the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Treyvon Martin, his “I felt threatened, he seemed dangerous” defense succeeded in acquitting him of murder.  That Zimmerman defied instructions to stay in his vehicle and not follow or confront the boy in the hoodie – and thus choose to stay out of harm’s way – was not enough to override his claim of feeling endangered.

Campus carry + greater racial and ethnic  student diversity + “perceived threat” = Peril.  And a special peril for non-white students. 

Which leads me to a larger question:  Is this just about satisfying the gun industry and its lobbyists? Is this an aggressive action to get out ahead of any attempts at gun control?  Or is “campus carry” an instrument of social control, an assault on the learning spaces we have created for our youth?

We have already seen the resignation of a highly celebrated dean from the UT-Austin school of architecture – a dean who said he would never have considered an offer from another university if it had not been for campus carry: “I felt that I was going to be responsible for managing a law I didn’t believe in.”  Professors report that recruiting faculty to a campus with guns is becoming more difficult. And I imagine that African American and Latino parents may be re-thinking their child’s aspirations to attend the state’s flagship universities – despite reputations for high academic quality and relatively affordable tuition – if their college years will always be clouded with the possibility that someone – a campus police officer, a fellow student, a visitor walking through campus – might “perceive” that the cell phone, the paperback, the bag of Skittles their child is carrying is a gun.  

Such perceptions are heightened by fear – fear that permission to have a gun on campus means that that person you see walking toward you or getting out of his car or heatedly debating a point in class or in a late night dorm room might be dangerous.  Maybe you’d better shoot first just to be sure.

If the professors and deans and people who staff the college offices leave to find jobs in gun-free work places, if the parents of minority students re-think taking advantage of Fisher and encourage their children to apply where guns won’t be an issue – has the gun lobby had a double victory?   Acceptance of guns on campus made commonplace, and critics who could potentially organize to oppose and reverse this legislation gone? 

Is “campus carry” meant not just to permit some kids to bring guns to our campuses and to normalize a culture of weapons in public spaces, but to create a subtle transformation in who feels at home in our public universities, who feels free to speak, and who feels safe?  Will “campus carry” cause the exit of those who question and, in the process, create a comfortable venue for those who – out of real or imagined fears or a profit motive or political expediency – won’t be satisfied until guns are everywhere in America?

What could possibly be the intent behind the votes for “campus carry”?  What are the intended outcomes? And which of the consequences might have been unintended?  How does “campus carry” compute with the growing cultural and ethnic diversity in our colleges?  Much has been made of the perils of mixing of guns and alcohol, guns and partying, guns and sexual violence, guns and the still-forming “executive functions” of the young adult brain, guns and depression, guns and social conflicts when guns go to college.

There is also the peril of silencing lively discussion, intellectual inquiry, free debate, and challenging ideas – not just because someone in the room might have a gun, but because “campus carry” has kept some of the most lively minds, inquiring intellects, provocative questioners from teaching at – or enrolling in – a college where the same legislature that cut the academic budgets increased the presence of guns.




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GUNS, SCHOOLS AND KIDS, Part 8

“CAMPUS CARRY”

Ah, the good old days when “campus carry” evoked quaint images of the awkward boy shyly asking the cool girl, the cute girl with the sweet face, if he can carry her books to class.  (Cue the sock hop tunes of the 1950’s!)

Now the women on campus carry not only their own books but – if they so choose – a loaded weapon:  a gun.

In the “what were they thinking” department (more like “why weren’t they thinking?”), the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 1, the so-called “Campus Carry” law, authorizing “a license holder to carry a concealed handgun on or about the license holder’s person while the license holder is on the campus of an institution of higher education or private or independent institution of higher education in this state.”

(The only sentence of sanity is the one that follows:  “Open carrying of handguns is still prohibited at these locations.”)

The law authorizes universities, through their presidents, to designate campus locations where guns will not be permitted, laboratories, for example, but they may not opt their university out of “campus carry.”   Private universities may opt out, but only after an elaborate process of decision making informed by the opinions of faculty, administration, students, trustees and staff.

Guns on campus in the hands of anyone but trained law enforcement officers is a dumb idea:  so dumb it belies the very educational purpose of the university.  All the major private and independent universities in the state declined to allow guns on campus.  The universities and colleges our taxes pay for had no such sensible choice.

“Campus carry” has been opposed by

• university administrators as an unwanted responsibility, as dangerous, and as expensive to implement (the legislature did not fund implementation), including arranging for storage, signage, informational materials and information sessions, training of staff and faculty in the parameters of the law and their authority regarding guns in instructional spaces)
• university police for the expense of implementing and their responsibility in face of added dangers to campus safety
• parents, all too aware of the potentially volatile mix of guns and alcohol, guns and partying, guns and youthful carelessness
• women students, already at risk for sexual assault and the unlikelihood that sexual violence will be prosecuted,
• faculty as a threat to the free and open flow of ideas OR who value their role as teachers, as mentors, as nurturers of ideas and inspirers of risk and exploration. 
• A dean!  My hero is the dean of architecture at UT, who resigned just before the law took effect, explaining to his colleagues and the university administration:  "I felt that I was going to be responsible for managing a law I didn't believe in."

I have the privilege of teaching at a private university that is gun-free.  It was gun-free before the law.  The many committees and convenings required to let the state know we’re staying gun free showed just how unified the faculty, students, staff, administration and trustees are in keeping it that way.   But being “inside the hedges” as we say at Rice, gives us more responsibility – not less – to oppose this law and speak up on behalf of our colleagues at state universities, community colleges, and medical schools who may not feel as free to speak up.

We may find it difficult as teachers to teach our legislature much when the gun lobby is so powerful and the legislators apparently so insecure.   But if we value our colleges and universities as places for the free flow of ideas and for encouraging our students to take the risks inherent in learning, then we have no choice but to try. 

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GUNS, SCHOOLS AND KIDS, Part 7

ORGANIZING FOR A GUN-FREE CHILDHOOD

Whether your passion is recruiting and supporting candidates who will support gun control laws, or building common cause in local communities for gun-free zones, or raising money for educational efforts to create informed publics on behalf of reducing gun violence and its causes, I hope you’ll look into these organizations and find one to support – with participation even before dollars.  Or that you’ll start the conversation among your neighbors and colleagues and children about what needs to be done in your own community – or school – or home. And then do it.

Americans for Responsible Solutions

http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.org/about/

 Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, a celebrated astronaut, founded Americans for Responsible Solutions to the rampant and senseless gun violence in our country. ARS raises funds for candidates for political office who are committed to regulating guns.

                 

This one is personal for me:  My daughter and I have shopped at the boutique linen store across the Tucson street from the Safeway where Rep. Giffords was gunned down at a “meet and greet” with her constituents. A friend had at the last minute canceled an appointment for that Saturday at the nail spa down the street.  Just a regular street, with regular stores, on a sunny Arizona day.  One of  Giffords’ staffers and 16 other people were shot, six of whom, including a judge, died that day. Giffords herself suffered brain injuries requiring long years of therapy and giving up her seat in Congress.   The press made much of the shooter’s history of mental illness and threatening demeanor; Arizona’s underfunding of mental health services briefly made the news.    Calls for even tighter background checks and gun access were deemed to be “politicizing the tragedy.” 

Gabby Giffords’ “district” is even bigger today as she and her husband Mark Kelly, the astronaut who logged the most days on the space station, transformed their loss into a new national organization to counter the NRA, call out a gun culture that rejects all legislative limits, and take on the NRA’s influence over Congress and state houses.  ARS raises money to recruit and promote candidates who will advocate what they term “responsible solutions” to the gun culture.  Check out their website to see whom they are backing in your state and how you can get involved to hold public officials’ feet to the fire once they’re elected.

Alliance for Gun Responsibility

http://gunresponsibility.org/

Vision: A community safe from the devastating consequences of gun violence.

The Alliance for Gun Responsibility "works to end the gun violence crisis in our community and to promote a culture of gun ownership that balances rights with responsibilities. Through collaboration with experts, civic leaders, and citizens, we work to find evidenced-based solutions to the crisis of gun violence in our community. We create innovative policy, advocate for changes in laws, and promote community education to reduce gun violence."

Everytown for Gun Safety Action

https://everytownresearch.org/

"Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund seeks to improve our understanding of the causes of gun violence and the means to reduce it – by conducting groundbreaking original research, developing evidence-based policies, and communicating this knowledge in the courts and the court of public opinion."                  

Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have joined to create Everytown for Gun Safety Action:

As mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg invited the mayors of America’s cities to join him in organizing to answer the National Rifle Association’s “report card” rating legislators on their stance (and votes) for or against gun control by creating a “report card” to inform voters which of their elected officials are working for gun control and gun safety.  (My letter urging our mayor at the time to not only join with Bloomberg, but take a lead in this organization given Houston’s extraordinarily high incidence of gun violence, was answered with a form letter saying essentially “thank you for sharing your opinion, but I’m a gun owner……”  After leaving office, the same mayor in an interview about the shootings at the Orlando night club said to the reporter that we have to do something about access to guns.  Can that sensible position be said out loud only when a politician is safely out of office?

Mayors Against Illegal Guns asked candidates for House and Senate seats to fill out a 10-part questionnaire “clarifying their positions on issues like background checks and [ammunition] magazine limits.”  Those already in office are  rated for their past statements and legislative votes on gun-related issues.  Their responses, according to the organization, are “used to rally voters for or against them accordingly.”  We should follow their example in quizzing candidates about their stands on gun control and let them know their answers will affect our votes.

Sandy Hook Promise

http://www.sandyhookpromise.org/

Mission:  Prevent gun-related deaths due to crime, suicide and accidental discharge so that no other parent experiences the senseless, horrific loss of their child.

The parents of the children murdered by a man armed with his own personal arsenal are the bravest people we could know.  The nation was sure that the killing of these little children would move Congress to act immediately on gun control legislation that had for decades been stopped by the NRA.  The NRA was so sure the deaths of these little children would prompt quick Congressional action that they immediately went on the assault, claiming in truly twisted press conferences  that we needed more guns, not fewer, and in the hands of more people:  If the teachers had been armed, their logic went, the children could have been saved.  For once, the NRA seemed to lose its cool, to show fear – fear of losing control of the politicians it had courted and cultivated, intimidated and bankrolled.

                

In the end, the NRA won the legislative battles. But the parents of Sandy Hook rose above that tyranny to persist in their legislative efforts, in their advocacy for those “special provisions” we need to protect our kids.  Just as they teach with such grace and strength what it means to grieve the loss of a child, they teach through Sandy Hook Promise, raising awareness, raising funds, raising voices.  Their first actions were to create safe play spaces in honor of every child who died. On their children’s birthdays, on the anniversary of the shooting, on normal days when children should feel safe at school, the Sandy Hook parents remind the nation the work of making childhood free of gun violence is not finished.

Moms Rising

http://www.momsrising.org/issues_and_resources/inspiring-gun-safety

"Moms as a collective voice on behalf of children’s well-being – health, safety, education for children; and policies supportive of families:  family leave, etc.  Sharing information on legislation, products, current issues; inviting collective advocacy through digital communications."

And I'm issuing an open request for readers to suggest others.  Please comment and distribute widely!

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GUNS, SCHOOLS AND KIDS, Part 6

Keeping Our Children Safe 

A Subaru ad opens with a parent saying ‘you can’t take that,’ while pulling a ninja martial arts weapon from his son’s camp bag.  In scenes that follow a dad yells “hey, you can’t….” to a young daughter poised to ski down the stairs; a mom scans a son’s laptop with a “you can’t ….” expression of concern for on-line hazards.  Cut to scene of teenage boy picking up the car keys and calling out to mom, “I’m taking the car.”  But instead of “car” he names the Subaru:  yes!  It’s safe.  Mom approves.

Subaru's marketing department brilliantly captures every parent’s nightmare:  that midnight call that their child has been in a wreck.    Only a parent’s caution – no skiing down the stairs! no bad stuff on internet! – can keep our kids safe.  Good parents, caring parents,-- parents who want their kids to be safe-- will buy this model of car.

Imagine an different ending for that ad:  a parent declining to buy a gun no matter how many ads claims that “guns don’t kill,” a parent choosing to shop where a “No Guns” sign is prominently displayed in the window, a parent speaking up against teachers being armed at school, a parent hosting the outings and sleep-overs if they know there will be guns at the other children’s homes, a parent calling out a parent who has a gun in her purse or his car.

Image credit:  http://texasweaponattorney.com/2016/01/04/understanding-texas-handgun-signs/

Those parents need the rest of us – their village – to back them up, to speak up for a gun-free culture for their children, and to do so with a collective voice and strong collective action.

Where do we start?  No strong federal legislation came out of the shootings at Sandy Hook or the many gun killings since then. But it is not true that “nothing changed.” 

First, parents are taking individual action in their shopping, their voting, their talks with their kids.

And all over the country  -- our country!—people are organizing for smart gun control legislation, for accurate and systematic and sustained collection and publication of data on gun-related violence.  Parents and others are pushing for solid research on the effects of gun violence on communities, on children’s physical and mental health, on families, on mass incarceration, on money in politics, on local economies.

From the parents of children murdered by the gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary, to the billionaire mayor of New York, to a congresswoman herself severely injured by an assassin who managed to kill her staffers, bystanders and a judge, Americans are organizing to counter with reasoned argument and passionate claims on our morality the systemic violence of the National Rifle Association, its “owned” members of Congress, and the lucrative network of gun dealers and trainers. 

According to Patrick Blanchfield in The Nation magazine, “as of July 2016,  some 14.5 million Americans have been licensed to carry a concealed weapon, but 11 states don’t require a license; some states require training for a license, some don’t. And according to Blanchfield, sometimes “training” means listening to a lecture at the level of “don’t point your gun at things you don’t mean to shoot,” and “treat all guns like they’re loaded.”  According to the author, the NRA not only has a network of fire-arms trainers in various states but also participates in drafting any gun-related laws through its Institute for Legislative Action.  Training by NRA instructors represents a huge income stream for the NRA.  Blanchfield puts the number of NRA instructors nationwide at 55,000, with at least a million “students” taking the training:  Solid income stream + new cohort of anti-gun-control Americans.  Blanchfield was writing from his investigation into the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and Resort, 550 acres of Nevada dedicated to shooting – at a level described as beyond military or law enforcement training.

The article is chilling for the claims made by the Front Line owner that “only a gun” can stop [fill in the blank naming a crime or threat].  It is also chilling as a window into the vast network of money, political connections, corporate incarnations of “training,” and of course gun dealers that work together very closely to assure that there will be more guns in more hands in more places with less regulation and more normalization of a gun culture.   To justify their rigid defense of access  even to militarized weapons in civilian hands, they carefully coordinate messages of danger-without-a-gun in ads and magazines and online streaming: messages of fear.

We can’t let manufactured fears dominate our actions to limit guns in the lives of our children. They deserve better.  My next post will list some of the ways parents and others are getting together to challenge the intransigence and  the seeming immovable force that is the gun industry in our country.     Kindred spirits finding each other and working together to create those “special provisions” our children deserve.

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