The shooting at Silver Rail Elementary school earlier this month marks the 449th mass shooting in the USA since the start of the year.
It brings to light, once again, the decades old question of why mass shootings still happen, and the extent to which it is a consequence of government failure.
Having spent some time in the American school system, it’s bizarre to learn that schooling in the UK doesn’t include some sort of exposure to gun violence. UK schools have statutory safeguarding frameworks and the guidance on keeping children safe is legally binding. Why is it that the US has compulsory attendance laws with no legal duty of protection?
The stark contrast begs an answer to what school shootings ask of the US, and highlights what the UK has already answered.
One could argue that the American government is failing tremendously to protect their most vulnerable. Gun violence remains the number one leading cause of death in children in the US — a direct consequence of the government’s choice time and time again to protect an outdated amendment over its next generation.
The core of the Second Amendment debate revolves around self-determination and the rights of individuals. District of Columbia v. Heller is the landmark case used to support the argument that individuals have the right to bear arms. The case underscores the view that any attempt to limit the right to bear arms undermines not only individual freedom, but also national historical tradition.
However, rights have limits. The argument for less restrictions on gun ownership frames protection as a clash of rights, but it’s objectively more nuanced than that.
It’s also, at its core, not an issue isolated to the US, not because gun violence could become a threat in the UK, but because the issue at stake scrutinises what a country does, or does not, do to protect its children. In every scenario, access to a weapon means increased opportunity for casualties, whether that is a gun in the US or a knife in the UK.
The question isn’t whether legislative protections for these weapons are absolute, but how much protection of children justifies limiting them, and who gets to decide. The UK is a step ahead of the US; UK legislature makes the chain of responsibility clear, whereas US courts have held that police have no constitutional duty to protect individuals.
In the name of individual freedoms, adults can choose whether or not they utilise their Second Amendment rights, but children can’t. They live with the choices of the adults around them whether or not that choice was made with their best interests in mind.
The United States has the duty to uphold responsible sovereignty and guarantee welfare for its own citizens. A responsibly sovereign nation does not simply govern, they govern in a way that recognises individuals as participants, which the US is abhorrently failing to do.
If the human cost of maintaining the spirit and letter of the law isn’t enough for government action, what is?