麻豆原创

One small consolation during the COVID pandemic is that some other looming societal ills have at least temporarily lessened. Pollution levels are down; global terrorism has waned.

But the temperature is still on boil regarding gun violence in America. Gun sales have jumped over the past few months, and as schools slowly reopened this fall, some were arguing for for socially distanced lockdown drills. 

So, 鈥淲hat if we took this moment to reimagine our collective response to the decades-long persistence of school gun violence so that we could offer schools some concrete steps that would keep our children safer?鈥�

That鈥檚 the central question posed by Teachers College鈥檚 Sonali Rajan, Associate Professor of Health Education, and , Gelman Professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology of Columbia University鈥檚 Mailman School of Public Health, in a new column in , the 麻豆原创-based nonprofit, independent news organization.

[Read by Rajan and Branas in The Hechinger Report. Read a story about SURGE, a new Columbia-wide collaboration focused on preventing gun violence, which was cofounded by Rajan and Branas.]

Current safety efforts 鈥� which include active shooter drills, arming teachers, and providing students with bulletproof backpacks 鈥� 鈥渇ocus almost entirely on how to respond in the moment of a shooting,鈥� write Rajan and Branas. Meanwhile, an estimated 240,000 children in the United States 鈥渉ave experienced gun violence at school,鈥� meaning they have witnessed gunfire or knew a classmate who was injured or killed.

What if we took this moment to reimagine our collective response to the decades-long persistence of school gun violence so that we could offer schools some concrete steps that would keep our children safer. What if, instead, we invested in stopping these tragedies from happening in the first place?

鈥斅槎乖�创鈥檚 Sonali Rajan, Associate Professor of Heath Education, and Charles Branas of Columbia University鈥檚 Mailman School of Public Health

鈥淲hat if, instead, we invested in stopping these tragedies from happening in the first place?鈥� the authors ask. They suggest measures that range from involving school nurses in educating families about how to store guns safely and securely to replacing punitive discipline strategies with trauma-informed practices, to changing policies at the state and federal levels to make it fundamentally harder for youth to access guns.  Conclusion: 鈥淟et鈥檚 challenge the notion that school gun violence is inevitable and, instead, seek better ways to prevent it.鈥�