A new public service advertisement from the American school safety advocacy group Sandy Hook Promise is a chilling reminder of the heartbreaking brutality of school shootings.
Titled Back-To-School Essentials, the advertisement shows students excited to resume school after summer break with their new supplies – colour pencils, socks, sneakers and skateboards. Except, it turns out, they come in handy in an entirely different situation.
In December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. The US government swore Sandy Hook would be the last.
Yet, since Sandy Hook, there have been 2,226 mass shootings, says this Vox report.
As one anguished Twitter user asked, “Where does it end? Does someone have to bomb our schools before we wake up and say no more?”
Other narrated experiences of “active shooter training drills” – an exercise that is actually conducted, and repeated in schools across the US.
However, many Americans, including President Donald Trump, continue to believe that the only way to stop school shootings is to arm more people. In February 2018, as a matter of fact, Trump advocated giving guns to teachers to stop such incidents.
Those who subscribe to this school of thought dismissed the campaign as propaganda.
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