Reading, writing, and fear of dying

Think about this. About half of American teenagers say they worry every day that a shooting with multiple victims could happen in their school. It doesn’t make any difference where they live. They can be in Cedar Rapids or Chicago, in Iowa City or New York City. The fear is everywhere because guns are everywhere. It’s not new here. In 1991, there was a mass murder at the University of Iowa where five people died, shot to death by a wandering gunman., a Ph.D. graduate with a grudge as well as a degree.

Simply, there is no place in Iowa or America where a school is safe. Arm your teachers, put a cop outside the door and just get ready to watch them bleed. The line from the NRA that “guns don’t kill people, people do” is deadly babble. Obituaries are not ambiguous. Scores of students and teachers have died in recent years and more have been wounded. That is not a childhood experience to live with or die with. The governor and the Legislature have made it easier over several sessions to conceal them, carry them, just own them.

When you and I were in school and the fire alarm went off unexpectedly, when it wasn’t just a drill, we assumed it was, in fact, a fire. You got out before you couldn’t. Students have died over the years in inescapable fires.

Today an alarm can mean ready, aim, fire as in “kill” with a gun. Today another mass murder may have caused the alarm and your kid might become a victim with police officers, not firemen, on the scene to help.

We have been sold carnage for years and the peddlers, and their craven allies in state capitols, have no shame. The president of the National Rifle Association and his wife can be seen on a video of them killing an elephant, cheering themselves, and smiling. Our children are not as big as elephants, but large enough to die by aimed gunshot. Neither elephants nor children should be targets of killers. Day after day, year after year, our kids who ought to be concerned about learning are worried about dying.

There are at least 200 million, some estimates reach as high as 350 million, guns in the United States. Southern states have the highest number of gun owners, with about 36 percent of residents owning at least one. But even here, in the bucolic Midwest, about 30 percent do. Most guns in the United are in rural households.

There is one encouraging sign. Young people, including some who are voting for the first time, are calling out for change, and are voting for new faces and old ones who agree. Projections of that small, but significant change, should mean Democratic victories in 2024. Kids who didn’t vote or may come from Republican families are making guns their prime issue. Republicans should take cover.

When young people overwhelmingly support Democrats, maybe gun laws will change.

Conservatives in office, including in Des Moines, may be scanning the political landscape of a decade ago and not tomorrow. Poll after poll, shows young people, new or recent voters are moving dramatically to Democratic policies from guns to climate change, homelessness, and poverty.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.