Gun violence in the United States has reached an all-time high. According to the Pew Research Center, more Americans died of gun-related deaths in 2020 than in any year on record, with at least 513 of these deaths being the result of a mass shooting. 

Federal law has been woefully slow to restrict gun access and reduce gun violence, leaving the U.S. with more civilian-owned guns than any other country in the world, according to statistics released by the Council on Foreign Relations. This lack of national leadership has left states scrambling to pass legislation of their own. At the forefront of the push for gun regulation is the hope to end school shootings. 

In Wisconsin, the newest of these attempts to pass gun-related legislation takes a wildly different approach. The GOP proposal introduced to the Wisconsin legislature last week would allow licensed gun owners to carry firearms on school grounds. The bill’s author, GOP State Representative Scott Allen, said the hope is to add another layer of protection to school districts should they wish to use it. 

Proponents of the proposal argue that licensed gun owners situated on campus could subdue school shooters when police could not arrive on the scene in time to prevent student deaths. 

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“Every minute matters,” said Allen in a statement about the proposal. “In some communities, especially some of our rural communities, it can be a lot of minutes before authorities could arrive.”

Regardless of the intentions behind the initiative, legalizing any firearms on school grounds has more potential to harm rather than protect Wisconsin’s youth. The truth is, the more firearms are present on a school’s campus, the more likely disasters are to occur. 

K-12 schools are not the only institutions at risk from this bill. In February, a mass shooting at Michigan State University left three students dead and five others injured – leaving college students across the nation in fear of a similar incident on their own campus. From Wisconsin’s elementary schools to the UW System, students under this bill would go to school every day no longer worried about if there was an armed person on their campus, but where they were and if they would open fire. 

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Further, data from Statista shows that 94 of the 141 mass shootings occurred in the U.S. between 1982 and April 2023 with a legally obtained firearm. It should be noted that, while this data might fluctuate depending on what is classified as a mass shooting between institutions, this still points to an overwhelming majority of shootings being conducted with a legally obtained weapon. 

Combatting gun violence with more firearms is not the answer to protecting Wisconsin’s youth. If schools are to become a safe space for students again, legislation has to focus on restricting guns rather than expanding them. 

Fiona Hatch ([email protected]) is a senior studying political science and international studies.