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American prisons exist to punish and rehabilitate.

American schools exist to educate and develop.

There was a time when prisons were institutions of violence: inmate-on-inmate homicides, guard-on-inmate homicides, inmate-on-guard homicides, and too many suicides to accurately record.

There was also a time when schools were institutions of safety: located in neighborhoods safe to ride bicycles, with playgrounds for recreation, and classrooms for learning.

That was then.

This is now.

The corrupt and vitriolic American political system has turned this social dynamic on its head. Prisons, and the gang-infested yards inside them, are now safer than schools and the playgrounds that surround them.

According to Statista, there were 143 inmate homicides in American prisons in 2019 (the latest year for which statistics are available) while, according to a January 5, 2024 U.S. News report, there were 346 school shootings across America in 2023 that left 248 people either injured or killed.

In America today, where white supremacy and violence have found an acceptable niche in the body politic, a student entering a classroom has a greater fear for their safety than an inmate entering a prison chow hall.

Why?

Guns and their availability; namely, the deadliest military-style assault weapons and the most powerful ammunition manufactured are easier for a student to buy than a bottle of beer.

A convenience store clerk in Texas will ask an 18-year-old student for identification when purchasing a $10.00 six-pack of beer—identification that is necessary to carry beer.

A Texas gun store clerk, on the other hand, will not ask an 18-year-old student, regardless of how mentally unhinged they may appear, for identification when purchasing a $3,000 in military-style assault weapon and ammunition.

This is the way hardcore Texas gun owners want it. They believe mass shooting violence is a product of mental illness, not guns.

It has been reported in the past that the Sheriff and Mayor of Uvalde, Texas attributed the May 24, 2022 shooting death of 19 Robb Elementary School students and two teachers to a high incidence of mental illness in the community.

That is not only a shameful insult to the people of Uvalde but is a sophomoric assault on basic logic.

Prisons have a higher incidence of mental illness among its population than any other place in the U.S. Yet mentally ill inmates are not committing mass murder against their fellow inmates.

Was the mass shooter at the Robb Elementary School mentally ill?

Sure he was. That issue is not subject to debate.

But a reasonable argument can be made that the insurrectionists who stormed the nation’s Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 intent on hanging the Vice President of the United States were also mentally ill, not “patriots” of democracy as many right-wing politicians would have us believe.

Like it or not, violence is not a manifestation of mental illness, rather mental illness of a manifestation of violence.

And the seed of violence, and the bumper crop of death it produces, comes from the soil of gun manufacturing, especially those manufacturers that assembly-line military-style assault weapons.

Guns have, and always have had, one singular purpose: to kill life, whether human or some other species.

It is the very deadliness of guns that demand regulation of them—something that can be achieved without wholesale confiscation or unreasonable control of them.

Common sense regulations like a 21-year age limit in order to purchase a gun, identification and background check prior to purchase, of the gun, and community safety-driven restraints on the “privilege” not “right” to open or conceal carry guns.

Any right thinking person should be able to live with these basic, responsible regulations. They would have prevented the deaths of 19 innocent children and two teachers.

But gun regulations do not have a friendly audience in this country, especially in politically conservative states, because too many gun owners believe, regardless of how irrational, that an unrestrained accessibility to guns is a necessary defense against the “government is coming to take your guns” conspiracy theories.

Need proof?

News reports inform that Americans spent nearly $17 billion on guns and ammunition during the Obama presidency but gun sales immediately declined under the Trump presidency.

The conclusion is simple: a large percentage of white Americans, especially gun owners, felt racially threatened under Obama but racially secure under Trump.

These racial fears, and the social divisions they spawn, have a tragic consequence: namely, an increasing number of white gun-owning parents are not only teaching their children how to use guns but instilling them with a race driven anti-government hatred necessary to turn their guns on people of color in defense of some QAnon-inspired cause.

Gun ownership is no longer about the right to “keep and bear” a single shot musket or a flintlock pistol for either self or community protection. It is now about the right to “keep and bear” the most deadly guns available and to use them under whatever circumstances (whether legal or not) the individual deems appropriate, such as in “road rage” moments or attempts to break up social protests.

If this insanity is allowed to continue, our schools will become a breeding ground for future inmates. Violence begets violence, and children grow into adults—and if children are victims of, or exposed to, violence, they will seize violence as a reflexive response to any life situation that displeases them.

America can be a safe, gun-owning society but the nation will continue to reap a bitter harvest of violence so long as parents abuse their children and society marginalizes them based on their race, sexual preference, religious beliefs, or economic status.

The bottom line is this: mental health is being made a scapegoat for tragedies like the Uvalde school shooting when, in fact, it is the political system that allows shooters to casually purchase or access their weapons of mass destruction that is responsible for gun-related tragedies.

Where does a deranged teenager, who cannot afford a pair of jeans, get $3,000 or more to purchase assault weapons and ammunition?

And who are the gun store clerks that sell teenagers so many weapons and so much ammunition without at least alerting law enforcement about the purchase?