Before The Shooting Starts

This Guest Opinion appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times a couple of days ago. It was written by Debbie Wachspress of Lower Makefield, PA, a government affairs consultant and a national leader in the Million Mom March 2000 for common sense guns laws. She is vice president of the board of trustees of Kidsbridge Children’s museum at the College of New Jersey, the mission of which is to teach tolerance and anti-bullying.

Something we know to be true was confirmed on the front page of (The Courier Times) with the headline, “Police say student brought unloaded gun to school.” Kids are bringing guns into our schools. Like it or not, the potential for the next Columbine or Virginia Tech exists everywhere, even in our own back yard. So what should we do?

Some say the solution to prevent guns in our schools is installing metal detectors at the front door. Others promote random bag checks or a prohibition on carrying bags at all. Another contingent advocates patting down our children just before the morning’s Pledge of Allegiance. Most people don’t find any of these options appealing (myself included). I have an alternative.

One very important thing happened on that day at Pennsbury High that was perhaps more valuable than any of these desperate measures: Other students told a teacher about the gun. Speaking up in this situation is difficult. You are angering a classmate with the potential to do you harm. Somebody please give each of these kids a medal and let us hold them up as examples of courage and character.

Something we learned shortly after the Columbine massacre was that the two students who opened fire in the school had talked with other kids about their plans.

There were the most obvious of warning signs and yet not a single teenager in that high school had the wherewithal to tell a teacher. According to government studies, in 81 percent of school shootings, attackers told other students about their plans.

Our schools need to be fostering ongoing discussion about the importance of speaking up, that when one classmate talks about bringing a gun into school or keeping a hit list, speaking up is not snitching, but rather, it is saving lives. It is heroism. And while this conversation is occurring, let’s also make the effort to engage our children in ongoing discussions and role playing about the harmful effects of bullying, using the best school-based programs to foster this.

Ideally, character education is happening around our dining room tables and in the behavior that we model for our kids. When our children enter school, just as important as reading, writing and arithmetic is learning how to treat others with kindness and compassion.

Let us teach our children how not to be silent bystanders but rather to have the courage to come to the aid of a peer who is being bullied. This form of speaking up is just as important as the child who spoke up to the teacher about the presence of a gun.

Though I am running for the Lower Makefield Board of Supervisors and not the school board, I commend district CEO Paul Long for agreeing to meet with me to learn more about the National Speak Up campaign developed by PAX International. The Speak Up program makes a toll-free hotline available to report information about peers bringing guns into school, and in the last five years alone, the hotline has received nearly 20,000 calls. With numbers like that, I am willing to be that more than one school shooting was prevented.

As Deb noted, she, along with Matt Maloney, are running as Democrats for the Lower Makefield Board of Supervisors (click here to learn more).

Also, click here to learn more about PAX International’s Speak Up Program.