In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre that left 17 people dead, the Trump administration announced the creation of a federal commission to find “meaningful and actionable recommendations to keep students safe at school.”
However, while giving testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that although the commission is prioritizing safety for students across the country, it will not be focusing on the role fire arms play in school violence.
In a perplexing exchange, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont asked whether the commission would look at the role of firearms in violence at schools. “That’s not part of the commission’s charge, per se,” DeVos said, according to the New York Times. Leahy responded, “So we’ll look at gun violence in schools, but not look at guns? An interesting concept.”
Keeping the role of fire arms off of the commission’s agenda is particularly confusing as conversations unfurl about how school shootings impact students. According to a year-long analysis conducted by The Washington Post in March, more than 187,000 students attending at least 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours since the Columbine school shooting of 1999. The same analysis also found that since Columbine, there have been an average of 10 school shootings annually, with a low of five in 2002 and a high of 15 in 2014.
This year has been especially jarring: There have been 11 shootings less than three months into 2018, making it the worst year on record. (A similar report released by CNN in May takes the number of school shootings in 2018 to 23.) Many students, particularly those from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High and Santa Fe High School, have called out politicians for avoiding the subject of gun control. But DeVos’s comments feel entirely out of step with the national conversation that survivors of school shootings have been sparking by demanding change and organizing through the March For Our Lives movement.
DeVos also seemed to contradict the White House’s initial announcement about the commission where they listed several areas the group would examine, including age restrictions on certain firearm purchases.
So what will the commission look at if fire arms aren’t the charge here? According to The New York Times, “among other areas, the commission is slated to examine ratings systems for video games, the consumption of “violent entertainment” and the effects of news media coverage of mass shootings. The group is also charged with considering whether to repeal a package of Obama-era school policies targeted at addressing disciplinary policies that disproportionately affect minority students.
The commission is also looking to fund and bolster mental health and school infrastructure resources.”
While violent entertainment consumption and video games have been associated with school violence, Psychology Today points out that analyses of school shooting incidents—from the US Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime—do not support a link between violent games and real world attacks.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Leahy also seemed to take issue with the commission’s focus on things like video games rather than fire arms: “Well, you’re studying things like how much time they spend on video games and all that, but you can go to a lot of other countries where they spend just as much time but have only a tiny fraction of the shootings that we do,” he said.
Elizabeth Hill, an Education Department spokeswoman, appeared to walk back a few of DeVos’s comments after the hearing by telling the Washington Post, “The secretary and the commission continue to look at all issues the president asked the committee to study and are focused on making recommendations that the agencies, states and local communities can implement. It’s important to note that the commission cannot create or amend current gun laws — that is the Congress’s job.”
She did not respond when asked why DeVos’s statements at the hearing were different.
The commission, which includes Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, held their first public forum on Wednesday to solicit feedback and solutions for school safety. Many participants criticized the group for not considering the role of firearms in gun violence, according to CNN.
“We, the students, experience the American school system every day,” Alessia Modjarrad, a Montgomery County, Maryland high school senior said. “We used to sit in classrooms waiting for something to be done. I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want to think that, at any moment, someone with a gun could walk in and hurt us all.”
