Guns and Fourth Graders

​        Fourth grade was my favorite year at Vergennes Elementary School. Our class had a brand-new teacher, Mr. Wells. He was right out of college in the fall of 1971 and we were the first students he taught on his own. Our class had been together since first grade. Kelly McKinnon and Laurie Allo lived down the street from my house and we often walked to school together, along with my twin sister Ann, and Julie Emerson and Carol Fagan. Those three were in the other fourth grade class with Mrs. Gray, a teacher in the last few years of her career, so we thought we’d really lucked out with Mr. Wells. Mark Sabrin and Jeff Oulette were in my class; they were cousins. Jeff would later marry Betsy Adams, another classmate. They’re still married today. Tommy Brigan, another fourth grader in Mr. Wells’ class, just retired a few weeks ago after a long career with Green Mountain Power. Homer Homel was the tallest kid in our class and Cheryl Brinkman was the smartest. Fourth grade felt like the sweet spot of elementary school. We were no longer in the “primary grades,” at the other end of the building, but we also weren’t yet switching classes and having different teachers for different subjects; that didn’t happen until fifth grade. We still dressed up a bit for school, or at least had “school clothes” that we peeled off when we got home to put on our “play clothes.” We didn’t know what each other’s parents did for a living so we weren’t really aware of family finances. We may not have even known the first names of our friends’ parents, but we knew all the kids in the family and probably the grandparents. We’d likely heard of the war in Vietnam, but we weren’t yet learning about it in school. Nixon, Watergate, and the Energy Crisis were all still ahead of us.
        When I heard about the May 24 shooting in the fourth grade class at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the first thing I thought of was Mr. Wells and our classroom in Vergennes. And of Mark, Jeff, Betsy, Tommy, Homer and Cheryl. And also Danny, Monica, Lindy, Pam, Robin, Kevin and Bridgette, who made up the rest of our class. The more details that came out about the shooting in Uvalde, the more horrific the news became. These fourth graders were in such fear. One was making calls to 911 desperately asking for police help. She rubbed the blood of her dead classmates on herself to appear to be dead. All this lasted for nearly an hour. It’s impossible to imagine the fear they must have felt each minute. I listened to an interview with one father, as he held a photo of his daughter. He was listing all of her wonderful fourth-grade accomplishments, and then said “she was a good girl. She brushed her teeth every night.” That’s how young she was; young enough that brushing her teeth every night was a proud accomplishment.
        Because of these fourth graders, my fourth grade friends, and Mr. Wells, I decided that I needed to know more about guns, guns control, “common sense gun laws,” the Second Amendment, DC v Heller, red flags, “violent ideation,” gun ownership and responsible gun ownership. I have close friends on both ends of “the gun debate.” Some believe there is no need for anyone, let alone an 18 year-old, to own a semi-automatic weapon, as was used in Uvalde. There are some who believe that restricting gun ownership is a slippery slope and that we must address the underlying issues of gun violence (a broken mental health system, youths’ continual exposure to very realistic, violent video games, kids without adults in their lives who care about them). All these beliefs have value to me. There are people who are on the extreme ends of this debate – from “no one should own a gun” to “the Second Amendment protects my ‘God-given’ right to own a gun.” I don’t agree with either of these extremes. (And don’t get me started on people bringing God into this topic as if God is an entity who proclaims from the heavens what Constitutional rights Americans have. More on the Second Amendment later.) I believe there are many more people in the middle ground of this debate and these people all want to reduce gun violence and promote responsible gun ownership.
        The basic premise of my thinking was – there are more guns in US than in any other country, and there is more gun violence in the US. It seems like a simple equation. More guns = more deaths by guns. It’s more nuanced than that, and the equation isn’t correct.

Here are some statistics:

- more than 81.4 million Americans own guns
- 44% of US households at least one gun - there are 393 million guns in the hands of civilians in the US (so not counting military or police personnel)
- the average American gun owner has 5 guns
​(all of the above from Americangunfacts.com)

- in 2020 – 45,222 people in US died from gun related injuries (CDC)
- 43% of those deaths were homicides and 54% of those deaths were suicides (Pew Research Center)

Countries with the Highest Total Gun Deaths (2019) Brazil – 46,436 US – 37,038 Venezuela – 28,515 Mexico – 22,116 India – 14,710

The US is not in the top five countries highest rates of homicides per 100,000 people. Those countries are El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia and Brazil.

Mass shootings (a shooting in which four or more people are killed) account for a small percentage of gun violence in the US. (worldpopulationreview.com)

        Mass shootings, especially school shootings, get a lot of media coverage. This helped to skew the numbers for me. My assumption, prior to looking at the numbers, was that the US was very high in comparison to other countries in total guns deaths and that homicides would outnumber suicides. Homicides are the second leading cause of death for adolescences 15 to 19, (behind accidents) which in and of itself is a frightening statistic that deserves a lot of attention, research, and prevention efforts.
      I recently had a conversation with my Lancaster friend Larry Barker, who owns several firearms and also taught gun safety to youth for many years, and is squarely in the category of a responsible gun owner. He suggested to me that mass shootings, including school shootings, account for a small number of homicides in the US and that the fear of school shootings makes us believe differently. He said he believes people are reacting based on fear, not logic or statistics. He compared it to a shark attack off the coast of Maine that killed a kayaker near where he kayaks. Because so many more kayakers are in the coastal waters of Maine than ever encounter a shark, he reasons, he shouldn’t be hesitant to continue to take his kayak out.
         But the fear is there, for all of us. Many millions of us didn’t personally know any of the fourth graders killed in Uvalde, or the high schoolers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida, but we all know fourth graders and high schoolers; we were fourth graders and high schoolers. Gun violence happens in all different kinds of settings now – schools, movie theaters, churches, synagogues, political events, grocery stores – so that it seems it can happen anywhere. It’s not logical; it’s fear-based thinking. We read now about people being shot following an argument in a parking lot and I think, “why did the guy even have a gun on his way into the grocery store?” That seems like a logical question to me. The answer is, “because he can,” which doesn’t seem logical to me.
         This is where I separate myself from some of my friends who lean toward the end of the spectrum that invokes the Second Amendment. We can all spout our opinions about what a “militia” technically is, and how an amendment, written when muzzle loaders were being used, can or can not apply to the semi-automatic weapons of today. But the only people whose opinions will really change anything are those of the nine justices the of Supreme Court. In 2008, in the District of Columbia v. Heller, a majority of the justices ruled in favor of Dick Heller, who sued Washington, DC after it banned residents from owning handguns. At the time, Justice Antonin Scalia (known for being a conservative member of the Court) wrote in the decision, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
        In 2010, in a similar decision from McDonald v. the City of Chicago, the Court decided that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments, not just the federal government. And again, the Court wrote in its decision: “It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of any handgun in the home, recognized that the right to bear arms is not ‘a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever for whatever purpose.’”
        It’s also interesting to me that former Chief Justice Warren Burger, appointed to the Court by Nixon in 1969, also commented on the Second Amendment after he retired. In an article he wrote for the Associated Press in 1991 he stated: “The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it is intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.” There have been a few memes circulating on Facebook of other quotes from Chief Justice Burger that combine and edit a few things he said at different times. More accurately, here’s what he said during a 1991 interview on PBS: “If I were writing the Bill of Rights right now, there wouldn’t be any such thing as the Second Amendment.” Then he reads it. He continues to say, “this has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat, fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” So Chief Justice Burger, a Nixon appointee to the Supreme Court, in 1991 is calling out special interest groups for trying to distort the meaning of the Second Amendment. It would be interesting to hear his comments today about how the gun lobby, most notably the NRA, and other “special interest groups” have twisted the Second Amendment to authorize people to carry any weapon whatsoever, in any manner, for any purpose.
        Because I knew very little about guns, and had never fired one, I took Larry up on his offer to go to the firing range in Groveton, NH. I thought it might help me understand the appeal of guns. First I had a very thorough lesson at his house, learning a great deal about different kinds of firearms and ammunition and their purposes. In a perfect world, everyone who owned a firearm would be taught a gun safety course by Larry. At the firing range I did fairly well. I’ve got my shot-up paper target to prove it. We shot .22s, first at the paper target, then at some clay disks on a berm farther away, and then at some other targets. I got a bit of a sense of why people would like it. It was fun to learn a new skill. It was challenging and there was immediate feedback on how I did.
         Larry and I had a good conversation between two people who don’t agree on all aspects of gun ownership. I don’t understand why an 18 year-old boy needs to be able to buy an AR15 for his birthday. Larry thinks we don’t put enough focus and money into the root problems of gun violence, and he’s right. He also thinks that people should be charged with a felony (which it is) if they lie on their paperwork when purchasing a gun and he believes that there are already some regulations in place that, if enforced, would combat gun violence. I agree with that too. But I keep going back to that fourth grade classroom, where instead of Mr. Wells it was Mrs. Mireles and Mrs. Garcia.
      Progress was made with legislation in Florida following the Parkland shooting, and it can be made in other states. In Florida we can credit the brave and bold students of Majory Stoneman Douglas High School, along with a bipartisan legislative effort, that brought about change. There is currently a bipartisan group in Congress working on a gun safety package to present to their colleagues. I want to be hopeful. However, Sen. John Cornyn, the lead negotiator for the Republicans, was booed on Friday when he spoke at a GOP convention in his home state of Texas before he could even explain what options and plans that were being discussed by the bipartisan group. People need to listen and be thoughtful. I know I need to rise above my fears and listen to responsible gun owners like Larry. And I hope Larry has a better sense of my fear. He took a photo of me with my shot-up target and told me to use it for refrigerator art. I didn’t do that, but I have photo of it on my phone that I sent to my daughters to show them I got outside of my usual comfort zone and tried something new. In a thank you-note I wrote to Larry, I suggested that if he and I were assigned by Congress to come up with a bipartisan gun safety package, I bet we could do it. In the meantime, while we’re waiting for a message from Congress asking the two of us to step forward, I’m doing what I can. I’m educating myself and I’m writing, writing about what scares me and what makes me hopeful in this world.

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