Let's put politics aside and truly talk about fixing gun violence: View

I am a mom in the Croton-Harmon School district and was an elementary school special education teacher before I started my family. I know all too well the anxiety of the lockout drills, and I fully appreciate the importance of addressing violent attacks in schools.

It is troubling, however, that the walkout was initiated by the Women's March, a very particular far-left program. Such efforts augment national unrest rather than attempt to address violent attacks through constructive discussion or the promotion of substantive legislative action. 

Gun violence is a problem that should be completely bipartisan. But the approach towards solving it becomes slanted when influenced by specific political entities. Many students stood outside their schools without fully understanding the many factors that contributed to the recent violent attacks.

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School-age children are being taken advantage of when they are primed with a default-politicized position and beckoned into demonstration, especially when they do not entirely comprehend the motivations and philosophies of the organization driving these demonstrations. My 6th-grade nephew remarked that he felt mandated to participate or he would have been ridiculed or left out. 

When I was in middle school, I sat with fellow students in a riveting presentation given by a Holocaust concentration-camp survivor. Jews and Hitler's political opponents had been disarmed, he explained, and families were arrested without resistance because they were defenseless. Our social studies teacher at the time referred to this presentation the following day in a discussion about why the United States’ Second Amendment existed. 

I have never owned or even touched a firearm, but I believe the First and Second Amendments of our Constitution anchor our freedom and protection. I want children, including my own, to understand why these freedoms were initially established and to respect and practice the responsibilities that continue to go along with them. 

My suggestion for schools would be to ask teachers to host discussions about ways to stop school violence. This way, they could encourage respect for human life in tandem with debates addressing why people support firearm ownership. Unfortunately, in times of sheer emotion after such national tragedies, a balanced argument is often lost.

I often experience my town as being very insular, with either little recognition of other views or even antagonism towards deviations. Let's turn that around. Regaining civil discussion is the key to the improvement of safety that we all want.

We can make a lot of progress considering the thoughts of Ryan Petty, father of Alaina Petty, who was killed in last month's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He proposed that instead of walking out of school, students should be encouraged to, in his words, “Walk up to the kid who sits alone at lunch and invite him to sit with your group; walk up to the kid who sits quietly in the corner of the room and sit next to her ... Walk up to your teachers and thank them; walk up to someone who has different views than you and get to know them — you may be surprised at how much you have in common." 
 
The writer is a Croton-on-Hudson resident.