Coping with Anxiety Over Gun Violence in the Schools
Why can’t we just discuss
instead of having to pull out a gun?
At the end of the day, we are the
ones who have to pay.
– Aaliyah Mendoza, from her poem “Shooting”
In February 2022, I had the opportunity to hear then eighth-grade Smith Middle School student Aaliyah Mendoza recite her poem, “Shooting,” during a school-wide poetry slam around the themes of Black Lives Matter and Black History Month. While I was awed by the eloquence of the poets, I vividly remember a wave of sadness too. So many of the poems recited by these 6th, 7th, and 8th graders were about gun violence and school shootings – such heavy thoughts for such young minds.
“The words reflect the reality of our lives,” says Ms. Mendoza, now a junior at Chapel Hill High School and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Poet Laureate for 2024-25. “Guns live rent-free in my mind. When a stainless-steel water bottle hits the floor, my heart jumps. Every loud sound at school sparks the same thought: a gun.”
Rise in School Shootings
That fear is grounded in reality. Beginning in 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death for children and teenagers. Let that sink in. More young people now die from firearms than car crashes, other types of accidents, drownings, or disease. Who can forget Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman walked into an unlocked door at Robb Elementary School and killed 19 students and two teachers? Or Oxford High School in Michigan, where a 15-year-old student opened fire, killing four students and wounding seven others – using a gun that his parents had purchased for him as an early Christmas present?
Closer to home, a UNC-Chapel Hill physics professor, Zijie Yan, was fatally shot on August 28, 2023, by one of his graduate students. The UNC campus was thrown into full lockdown, as were many nearby daycare centers and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS). This took place on what was the very first day of the district’s new school year. For kindergartners, their very first, first day of school was in a frightening lockdown.
Rise in Anxiety
For Chapel Hill High School French Teacher Christen Campbell, the anxiety from recent school shootings and ongoing threats of gun violence permeate her day-to-day life in the classroom:
I used to be able to keep my classroom door open, which I loved. It made the space feel open and welcoming. But now, under school policy, I must have my classroom door locked at all times. When a student leaves my classroom to go to the bathroom, I lock the door behind them. When the student returns, I lock the door again. The locking of the door is a daily – constant – reminder of the need to protect my students from an armed stranger in the building. It’s a heavy weight of responsibility that I carry around with me all day long. Many other teachers at the school feel the same.
While digital threats and lockdown drills can be a trigger for some, others have become desensitized to the risk of school violence. “It’s a way to cope,” explains Ms. Campbell. In social media posts, students say that BB guns and rifles are casually talked about as “props” or “toys.” In conversation, a student may “joke about shooting up a school rather than having to take a test.” One “joke” can lead to a full-scale law enforcement response and send a ripple of panic through an entire school building.
The healthiest path forward may be somewhere between anxiety and normalization. “It’s an important balancing act because we live in a world where gun violence is only going to get worse,” cautions Ms. Campbell. “We need to be vigilant. We need better laws balancing the Second Amendment right to own a gun and the fundamental right to public safety. We need to devote far more resources to the underlying causes of gun violence including poverty, mental health, racism, bullying, and the accessibility of guns.”
A failure of leadership in the North Carolina General Assembly
Recent polling shows that a strong majority of North Carolinians support common-sense laws limiting access to guns. This includes stricter enforcement of mental health screenings and criminal background checks, safer firearm storage requirements, and requiring permits to purchase a handgun.
Yet again, the Republican-controlled, NRA-beholden General Assembly is tilting the scales firmly in the direction of gun rights. The decisions our NC representatives and senators make can result in more and more guns on our streets. Two years ago, Republican lawmakers narrowly repealed a century-old pistol purchase permit requirement over the veto of then-Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, leading to an eleven-fold spike in handgun sales over the next 12 months. That was by far the biggest surge in the country, according to a state-by-state analysis.
This session, Republicans are pushing their gun-rights agenda even more aggressively. They want North Carolinians to be able to carry hidden handguns without first obtaining a permit (the so-called “constitutional carry”). They support lowering the minimum age to carry a firearm from 21 to 18 (although no one would be allowed to carry a gun on school property). If their proposals are signed into law, North Carolinians would no longer be required to take an eight-hour gun safety course, get fingerprinted at the local sheriff’s office, or demonstrate an ability to shoot a gun before being allowed to carry a concealed weapon. Compared to other states, North Carolina’s current ranking as 24th in the country for gun law strength would fall well below average.
Take action
“When will we have seen enough gun violence that we can finally agree, we need to do something?,” pleads Ms. Mendoza.
Here are some simple, practical things to do:
- Vote in every election, from School Board to Sheriff to Congress, for candidates advocating for reasonable gun reform including more stringent behavioral health and criminal background checks.
- If you are a gun owner, read and re-read these Ten Tips for Gun Safety in Your Home.
- Call 911 or report to school officials disturbing behavior or threats. Public-school districts across the state now have unanimous tip lines for reporting concerning behavior. For CHCCS, it is 1-844-5-SAYNOW.
- Join North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, a statewide nonprofit that is mobilizing grassroots support for reasonable gun safety and gun-violence prevention measures in the General Assembly.
- Urge members of your local Board of Education to devote more resources to behavioral health staffing and threat assessment training in the public schools as well as programs to identify and intervene with at-risk youth. For CHCCS, one email connects you with all seven School Board members: allboardmembers@chccs.k12.nc.us.
