As we’re all aware, on Thursday afternoon, a 16-year-old named Griffin J. John II shot his way into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, carrying a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. Four people died in a special needs classroom: three boys, ages 5, 8, and 11, and 25-year-old teacher Megan Lambert. Also shot were a 7-year-old girl and a 54-year-old teacher, both of whom were wounded. An unarmed teacher tackled him, and a parent named Kaylub Giamanco, who had grabbed a handgun from his truck, followed him into the room and shot John dead.
Two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News that John’s mother bought it around his birthday in August, and a law enforcement official told the Associated Press the same thing, though both sets of officials were anonymous and OregonLive says it couldn’t confirm it. Police haven’t released where the gun came from or who legally owns it. The Associated Press also reports that under Oregon law, a minor can possess a shotgun as long as a parent or someone with the parent’s consent provides it, which is the same law I called one of the dumbest in the country in my last post. Put those two things together and you have a 16-year-old who may have been legally allowed to hold the very weapon he used to kill four people.
Oregon isn’t some Wild West free-for-all either. Everytown for Gun Safety ranks the state’s gun laws as the 12th strictest in the nation, and Oregon already has a law requiring guns to be locked up, whether in a safe or a dedicated gun room, to keep kids from getting at them. Police haven’t said whether that law was violated here. A spokesperson from the Oregon chapter of Moms Demand Action told OregonLive that secure storage is one of her group’s advocacy priorities and that the state’s storage laws aren’t always enforced. A law that isn’t consistently enforced is more of a suggestion than a law. Storage laws mostly seem to get attention after the fact, once a kid has already gotten hold of a gun and caused a bloodbath.
Oregon’s biggest recent attempt at doing more hasn’t fared much better. Measure 114, which voters narrowly approved in 2022, would require a permit to buy a gun, complete with a background check, and ban the sale of high-capacity magazines, but it has never taken effect because it has been stuck in court since shortly after it passed. Lawmakers voted this spring to push its start date back to 2028, and the Oregon Supreme Court has yet to rule on it.
So what, exactly, is supposed to stop the next one? We can keep layering rules on top of a country soaked in firearms, and Oregon is proof that you can have fairly strict laws and still end up with four dead in a classroom. The only real way to prevent future school shootings is to take the shooting part out of the equation, and that means fewer guns, not more paperwork around them. Anything short of that is just rearranging the deck chairs and hoping the next kid’s parents lock the safe.
Before the comments section lights up, yes, I know Oregon has a big hunting culture, and yes, I know somebody is about to tell me the shotgun in question is a hunting tool. So let me ask you this. How many people truly need to hunt to put food on the table, and how many just really want to shoot something? Even for those who do hunt for food, there’s this thing called bow hunting, which would require most hunters to be in better shape, get a lot closer to their prey, and have far better aim.
Every time a kid with a gun walks into a school, we’re told the answer is another law, another drill, another security gadget, but it never seems to be fewer guns.
As a society, we’ve shown more than once that we can’t be trusted with them anymore.
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