Before the day a student brought a gun to school, I hadn’t really thought about gun violence in general. Of course, the subject of school shootings had come up every so often, but it never truly hit me until it almost happened to me.
As gun violence rises as one of the biggest causes of death in the United States, reaching over 48,000 deaths caused by firearms in 2022, it is becoming increasingly evident that something needs to change. Firearms were the leading cause of death in teenagers for the third year in a row, ranking higher than car crashes and cancer.
While state governments continue to enforce stricter gun laws, a strategy proven to be successful in California with its No. 1 ranking in gun safety, perhaps the path to take lies in education.
According to a study conducted by Sophie Kjærvik and Brad Bushman through the Ohio State University, a one-minute gun safety video dramatically reduced unsafe actions children ages 8-12 took when exposed to a handgun. After watching the video, approximately 27% more children refrained from touching the firearm and 23.3% more went to an adult.
When taught about how to use a gun, children were more likely to treat it as a weapon as opposed to a toy. So, the same kind of logic could apply to teens. Schools could educate students about gun safety, including topics like the mechanics of how a firearm works, how to use one and even what gunshot wounds look like. If we are shown real pictures of STDs in health class, showing high schoolers’ gunshot wounds is not so out of the question.
The very bottom line is, according to Children’s Hospital Colorado, teach children never to touch a gun if they find one, never to hold a gun without proper supervision, never to point it at anybody and to tell an adult if they find a firearm or know if a friend has access to one.
In California and Illinois, laws have been passed to ban manufacturers from marketing guns to underage people. According to an NPR interview with Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, “There’s no doubt that this is an attempt to indoctrinate children and create a culture where assault weapons are not just for parents but for the little ones, too.” Harmon specifies that these advertisements are often the first introduction to guns children have.
It is no secret that the world is full of guns, whether they reside in the military, hunting grounds or homes for self-protection. So, it is the responsibility of teachers and schools to teach children and teens to live in this gun-populated world. Doing so starts with education, teaching students how a gun works, how to fire it, the damage they can cause, why they exist and to use it only in self-defense.
I have trained in martial arts for over a decade, in which the same philosophies and teachings apply: Learn how your fists work, how to fight with them, the damage they can cause, why they exist and to use them only in self-defense. If we apply these methods of teaching regarding firearms, it could be the first step to bringing America back from first place in worldwide gun violence.
