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Recently, House Bill 1023 passed through the Georgia House, which would require that schools have weapons detection systems put in at main points of entry. How those systems are put in, or what is considered a main point of entry, is left to the schools to decide. This bill, despite what the house says, is like putting a band-aid on a broken bone. It might heal some cuts on the outside, but it won’t ever stop the actual problem below the surface. To stop school shootings, you need to stop the problem before it can ever reach the school.
But first, let’s talk about another problem the government is trying to address – one dealt with in the same slew of education bills – cell phones in classrooms.
Kids are on their phones too often in school. At least, according to the schools. Yondr pouches have been a popular solution to the problem. They work by putting the phones in closed, unopenable pouches that the student can have at all times, and the phone can only be accessed by using a specific “unlocking base” to re-open the pouch. Seeming like a good idea, schools started implementing them.
So what did the teenagers do? “[They] figured out that whacking the pouches against tables and railings at a particular angle would cause them to spring open, freeing the smartphones trapped inside” according to a NYT article. Some would also put in flat, rectangular rocks in place of their phone and some would just use a really strong magnet. For many schools, it ended up being a failure, and the article even admits it’s an inadequate solution to the wider problem of teenagers being addicted to their phones.
Doesn’t this seem similar to the weapon detector problem? The schools attempting to put in a general solution to a problem, only for it to be ineffective due to both the creative solutions of teenagers and the underlying problem not being addressed? Both are great visual indicators that the school recognises the problem and wants to address it, and they both seem like solid solutions at first glance. Yet, like a band-aid on a broken bone, they don’t truly fix the problem. Yondr pouches lack the effectiveness needed to get kids off their phones, and the metal detectors often used as weapon detectors seem to be just as effective as them.
The West Ed Justice & Prevention Research Center made a paper on the effectiveness of metal detectors in preventing school shootings. The conclusion states, “While metal detectors may provide a visible response to concerns about school safety, there is little evidence to support their effectiveness at preventing school shootings or successfully detecting weapons at schools.” The same paper says that the devices best suited for schools would cost around $4,000-$5,000, more than many schools can afford. It also says that students, ironically, often feel like their school is more dangerous and chaotic if metal detectors are necessary to keep the school safe. All together, this bill will likely do more harm than good.
That doesn’t mean this problem is unsolvable, but quite the opposite. It just takes more effective laws to be put into place. Take the country of Australia for example. After the Port Arthur shooting in 1996, laws were quickly implemented to stop them from ever happening again, such as restrictions on buying guns and buybacks of illegal weapons. Now, 30 years later, despite there still being cases of gun violence, there are significantly less than both before the shooting in Australia and in the current day in the USA, and there have been multiple studies that have shown that universal background checks with permits and extreme risk laws are both very effective in stopping gun violence and mass shootings. The members of the house clearly want this violence to stop – the vast majority of the house voted in favor of the bill – but much more is needed to keep us safe. We can stop school shootings once and for all, we just need to start taking this more seriously.
