Again and Again and Again

I research school shootings, and, while I don’t have any more information about the shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia than you do, I wanted to offer a few things I've learned that might help in this moment.

1. No one person can fix this, and if you need to step back from this story for your mental health or emotional well-being, that’s okay.
2. Schools are statistically the safest places for children to be. Gun violence of any kind at schools is extremely rare. While gun violence recently became the leading cause of death for children in the US, school shootings like the one day make up a very small percentage of those deaths. For many students, schools are where they receive most of their meals with stable adult supervision in temperature-controlled buildings.
3. Calling for change is political, but anyone who says "discussing politics after a school shooting is politicizing it" is acting in bad faith. School shootings are political. Education, gun policy, and community safety are inherently political. When people claim political action in response to a school shooting is "politicizing a tragedy," they are usually attempting to avoid an honest conversation about their policy positions that either contributed to the problem or created bad PR for them personally.
4. It is okay to critique politicians. Georgia has some of the weakest gun laws in the US, ranking (46 out of 50). Everytown has a good resource for information on state gun laws if you want to learn more.
5. It’s too early to say anything about state or federal gun laws and today’s shooting. However, we can say a lot about how gun laws impact gun violence. RAND has a good resource that shows which types of gun laws lead to increases or decreases in gun violence.
6. We need a federal gun policy solution. Even if GA had very restrictive gun laws, guns cross borders, and states with fewer restrictions often become the point of origin of guns into states with stricter gun laws.
7. Not all calls for change help the problem. I understand the impulse to do something, anything that feels like it makes kids safer. But some offered “solutions” that sound plausible can actually harm kids in unexpected ways. Here are a few that usually come up: More police in schools. Often called School Resource Officers (SROs), police in schools do NOT prevent school shootings, nor do they decrease the number of people killed or injured. More SROs do increase the number of students who get arrested in school and disproportionately target Black, Latino, and disabled students. School hardening. This involves installing bullet-proof glass, single-entry/exits, surveillance cameras, panic buttons, panic rooms, etc. There is no evidence that these are effective, but they are usually very expensive and take money away from other school operations. Increased lockdown training. There is little evidence that lockdown trainings reduce deaths or injuries, and there’s lots of evidence lockdown drills cause emotional distress for students of all ages.
8. Today’s shooting will impact that community for a long time, but the grieving process can be made easier if they have the autonomy to engage with media on their terms, sufficient resources like therapy, medical care, and financial support for victims’ families and friends.
9. Guns are not the only problem. Any progress on gun regulation will require addressing what guns represent culturally to Americans. The US has a gun violence problem unlike anywhere else in the world, and the reason why is tied to our history and how we construct certain social identities. If we pass strict gun laws but don’t address our social and cultural attachments to guns, the policies will fail.
10. No amount of research, information, data, or subject-matter expertise makes this easier. It hurts every time, and it should.