I am a survivor of the Arapahoe High School shooting in Centennial, Colorado, which took the life of an innocent student and the shooter. I wouldn’t expect you to have heard of it. More than 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at schools in the United States since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999.
We, the victims of gun violence in American schools, have become so innumerable that we have been paradoxically forgotten.
There have been more school shootings since 2018 — 208 — than there were in the 20 years prior —205. In the decade since the Arapahoe shooting, I’ve had dozens of conversations on the topic. While school shootings are a multi-faceted issue, I’ve seen people disengage and provide excuses when reasonable gun control is proposed as part of the solution. In my experience, many people’s commitment to change wavers when firearms are implicated, despite firearms being the leading cause of death for children in the U.S.
With the recent Apalachee High School shooting, I feel it is my responsibility as one of the 383,000 to continue the conversation. Researching school shootings and reliving the worst day of my life brings back haunting memories. Sadly, my trauma is already set in stone, but perhaps your beliefs are not. My hope is for you to hear my story and the facts surrounding the issue to understand why we need reasonable gun control if we ever hope to end massacres in our schools.
Fallacy #1: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. We should address the mental health crisis in America.”
This is a red herring fallacy, which attempts to misdirect an audience to a different topic and distract from the original point made. It is undeniable that mental health issues are a critical element to the rise in school shootings in the U.S. However, it does not excuse the role that guns play in these tragedies.
Universal background checks, mandatory waiting periods and higher age limits can all be part of the solution. After all, 77% of school shooters threatened their actions beforehand, meaning there’s likely a record that would be brought up in a universal background check. At Arapahoe, the shooter violently threatened faculty and students alike for months prior to his crime. Those months of violent words became violent actions on Dec. 13 when this 18-year-old boy took a shotgun he bought just a week earlier and turned it on a girl he didn’t even know. A background check, waiting period and greater age limitation might have prevented this tragedy.
Fallacy #2: “This is not a time to discuss policy, this is a time for mourning.”
This is a version of the false dilemma fallacy, which oversimplifies a situation to just two options that appear at odds with one another. In this case, the false dilemma is that you must either discuss policy or mourn, and that it is impossible to do both at the same time.
Mourning never ends. These families will never stop missing their dead children. Survivors like myself won’t stop jumping when a balloon pops or thinking about their last words when they hang up the phone. Because mass shootings are contagious, it is our responsibility to act, and to act quickly, so that less families need to mourn in the future.
Fallacy #3: “School shooters would get access to guns regardless of any laws that are put in place. It’s just a sad and complicated issue.”
This is an example of a fatalism fallacy. This assumes that the problem is set in stone and that no interventions can be done to change the outcome. It’s obvious that school shootings are both sad and complicated, but that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about them.
The example statement is categorically false. Eighty percent of school shooters get their guns from a friend, family member or another known person. Laws that enforce proper gun and ammunition storage in the home would significantly decrease firearm access for potential perpetrators. This would allow for more time for intervention by law enforcement or counseling services and time for the shooter to reconsider their actions. This solution would also help save lives lost to suicide and other gun-related accidents. In the aftermath of the Arapahoe shooting, we lost even more students to suicide than to the shooting itself. Could those lives have been saved, too?
For years I have remained quiet about my experience because of fear, regret and anger. But after watching thousands more students just like me suffer the way I have, my silence is no longer acceptable. My challenge to you is this: Don’t let tired rhetoric dominate the conversation.
Be a voice of reason to help end this uniquely American plague with reasonable gun control.
The lives of thousands of children depend on it.
(Michael Gibbs) Michael Gibbs is a recent college graduate from Brigham Young University and alum of Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado.
Michael Gibbs is a recent college graduate from Brigham Young University and alum of Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado. He works for a tech company in Utah.
The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.
