While no place in the United States is invulnerable to gun violence, Nebraska schools are safe. Students are far less likely to be victims of violence in schools than in their homes. When schools discuss gun violence with the community, the emphasis should be placed on safe gun practices in the home, as those are most critical to protecting students and their classmates from gun violence.
We know school resource officers (SROs) do not prevent school shootings. Studies show that when school are staffed with SROs--who are not required in most places to have any specialized training for dealing with children--the rate of student arrests increases. Arrests and removal from the classroom, sometimes in handcuffs, have been shown to disproportionately impact minoritized and disabled students, setting them up to enter the school-to-prison pipeline. Past research suggests that increasing the number of SROs in schools will result in a greater proportion of minorities and disabled students entering the juvenile justice system, and potentially the adult criminal justice system rather than college or the workforce.
We know that it is bad science and bad ethics to respond to school shootings by implementing knee-jerk policies that sap funds from education and lead not to less violent schools but to more criminalized students.
We believe that more effective measures must be implemented, such as gun policy changes that a) limit availability of some weapons, b) require adults to keep guns and ammunition away from children, and c) require gun industry profits to pay for gun industry mess.
We believe it is unethical to ask Nebraska’s residents to pay for gun industry devastation through increased property taxes that will be used to fund more guns in schools.
We believe that safe and nurturing schools--which we already have in Nebraska--can be made stronger with increased educational, counseling, and extracurricular services, and not by placing armed adults in the school.