As many Americans are painfully aware, there have been several hundred school shootings in the United States throughout the 21st century, including the deadly shooting in Minneapolis last month. This has, alas, led a variety of political figures on the right to go out of their way to steer the national conversation away from possible restrictions on guns.
But that’s not the only notable development in a political context. NPR reported this week on the rise of the “school shooting industry.” From the report:
In the wake of those shootings, an industry has emerged to try to protect schools — and business is booming. According to the market research firm Omdia, the school security industry is now worth as much as $4 billion, and it’s projected to keep growing.
Sonali Rajan, senior director with the research arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, told NPR, “The school safety and security industry has grown rapidly over the past decade. The challenge right now is that these school safety products, the vast majority, have absolutely no evidence guiding their effectiveness.”
It’s an important detail, of course. A variety of private companies are trying to convince state and local policymakers to invest in a variety of measures, none of which are cheap, to address and, hopefully, to prevent gun violence at schools. That there’s great uncertainty about the efficacy of these products is a difficult element to overlook.
But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: The United States has reached the point where we now have a “school shooting industry” — a phenomenon that is unthinkable in developed nations abroad.
At a Capitol Hill press conference this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson urged local Democratic officials nationwide to welcome Trump-directed Guard troops into their communities to prevent street crime. “We need to confirm for the American people that they do not need to fear for their lives when they drive to the grocery store, or they pick up their son or daughter from school,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters. What the GOP congressman neglected to mention is that many of the American people might be less inclined to fear for their lives if policymakers took steps to reduce gun violence — steps that Johnson and most of his party have thus far refused to seriously consider. Indeed, there’s a degree of irony to the circumstances: Those responsible for school shootings often use assault weapons, which are often accurately described as “weapons made for the battlefield.” It’s against this backdrop that the Republican House speaker believes the solution to violent crimes isn’t to get these guns off the streets, but rather, it’s to effectively bring the battlefield home.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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