The U.S. Fights Terrorism—But Not School Shootings
There is a colossal gap in how the government has prioritized stopping one form of violence versus the other.
Upon learning of of 17 people at a Florida high school on Wednesday, the activist Michael Skolnik reissued a plea for gun-control measures that he’s made in the wake of previous mass shootings. “One shoe bomber tried to blow up a plane and now we are forced to take off our shoes,” he on Twitter, in reference to airport-security policies after a terrorist attempted to detonate explosives in his shoes on a Miami-bound flight in 2001. “1606 mass shootings since Sandy Hook Elementary School and Congress has done NOTHING.” The a similar sentiment: “After 9/11, we reinforced cockpit doors & tightened security. We didn’t say ‘the only thing that stops a hijacker is a good guy on a plane.’”
