Adults Put Muscle Behind Student-Led Gun Control Movement

School boards in 70 of the nation’s largest school districts are putting some adult muscle behind a student-led movement for sensible gun control legislation, sending resolutions to their state and federal lawmakers urging them to ban assault rifles and strengthen background checks. Many of school boards also are asking their congressional delegations for more federal funding for school resource officers, psychologists and counselors.

The student protests, which sprang up around the country after a Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and another one Tuesday in Great Mills, Maryland, have reinvigorated a long stagnant gun control debate. An era of school shootings is a sad “new normal” for students growing up in a post-Columbine world.

The school board in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was among those passing resolutions Tuesday. Adults have been talking about gun control “for a long time with nothing happening,” school board member Jon Schumacher said.

“They really are demanding action,” Saint Paul Schools Superintendent Joe Gothard added. “They are demanding to be heard.”

Parkland students organized Saturday’s massive March For Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., and several cities across the country, finding ready support among peers across the country who live in fear their schools will be the next target of a school shooter.

Last week, tens of thousands of students took part in the ENOUGH National Student Walkout, leaving their classrooms for 17 minutes to honor the 17 people killed in Parkland. An April 20 rally is planned on the anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School.

The Maryland shooting, in which two people were injured before a school resource officer shot and killed the gunman, was another strong signal that “there needs to be some meaningful reaction by society at large,” said Thomas Ahart, the superintendent in Des Moines, Iowa, where the school board on Tuesday also voted for a resolution backed by the Council of Great City Schools.

Among other school boards approving resolutions is, notably, the one governing Broward County Schools, where Nikolas Cruz is accused of cutting down Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and staff with an AR-15 assault rifle, the kind school boards are asking lawmakers to ban.

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“There’s one thing that each and every one of these shootings have in common,” Teree Caldwell Johnson, the chairwoman of the Des Moines School Board said Tuesday. “Too often, they are assault weapons that are too readily accessible.”

The resolution the school board members in Des Moines approved doesn’t call for teachers to be armed, a contentious proposal made by President Trump and others after the Parkland shooting. It will also be sent Iowa’s two U.S. senators, Republicans Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst, neither of whom have come out in favor of deeper background checks. Backers of a bill in the Iowa Legislature to arm teachers pulled it after the Parkland shooting, but neither the House nor the Senate has taken up bills that would restrict gun laws.

“We’ll be waiting to see how they respond, Cindy Elsbernd, the Des Moines school board’s vice chairwoman, told KCCI-TV. “I think our students will continue to raise their voices as will the adults supporting them to see that something happens.”

The resolution approved earlier this month by the Broward County School Board also opposes arming teacher and says there is no credible research to support the idea. “Teachers are not trained law enforcement officers,” it said, “and should not be asked or incentivized to keep weapons accessible in their classrooms.”

The Pinellas County School Board passed a similar gun control resolution and asked other Florida school boards to join them.

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