Over a five-decade career in education, I have worked for common sense gun safety reform, and since 2016 I have been a board member of the Giffords Law Center to prevent gun violence.  During my quarter century as a school principal, I became acutely aware of the risk gun violence poses to the safety and security of our nation’s schools and colleges.  As a Giffords board member, I believe it is vital to ensure the safety of our schools, and their students, teachers and staff, so that teaching and learning can take place free from the threat or reality of gun violence.  Accordingly, I helped Giffords craft a policy on safe shools.

There are approximately 80 million students, teachers, and staff in K-16 education, a quarter of the entire U.S. population.  According to the Washington Post, there have been more than 435 school shootings since Columbine in 1999, with over 300,000 students having experience gun violence at school as of 2024.  The K-12 Shooting Database has recorded an exponential increase in annual shootings to 362 in 2023; this database records shootings any time a gun is fired or brandished with intent or when a bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims.  The effort to ensure safe schools comes at a time when firearms are the leading cause of death for children to age 18; the Surgeon General declared gun violence a national public health crisis in 2024.  

To advance a Safe Schools agenda, Giffords advocates several key policy goals—some specific to school shootings, others proven to reduce gun violence more broadly-- including: 

• advocate for safe storage and child access laws

• communicate to the public the need to secure firearms

• oppose guns on campus and school grounds and efforts to arm teachers

• promote universal background check

• raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21

• ban assault weapons and large capacity magazines

• advocate for red-flag laws

• support community violence intervention

• restore federal funding for gun violence research, including about firearms

• invest in mental health services on school campuses

• hold the gun industry liable in civil litigation when it markets guns to kids

While accounting for a small percentage of gun violence casualties, the impact of school shootings is enormous. Through continued efforts at comprehensive gun safety legislation and regulation, and with a focus on promoting safe schools, Giffords believes that we can reduce the scourge of gun violence that afflicts our K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.

The Giffords website contains a comprehensive collection of information about what we call can do to keep our children, youth, schools and colleges safe from gun violence.

The Issue: Gun Violence in Schools, Kids and Guns

Gun Laws: Child Access Prevention & Safe Storage

Guns In Schools: State and Federal Laws, K-12, College and University, 

Giffords Coalitions: Medical Partners and Educators

Resources: Protecting the Parkland Generation, Mass Shootings