IL Bill Relies on Communication, Not Confiscation, to Stop School Threats

The Illinois House Gun Violence Prevention Committee departed from its laundry list of anti-gun measures last week to consider a proposal by Republican C.D. Davidsmeyer that seeks to improve school safety without attacking the right to keep and bear arms.

Instead of punishing or demonizing gun-owning parents for the actions of their kids after a crime has been committed, Davidsmeyer wants to ensure that school officials are aware of any gun-related threats before a trigger is pulled. 

When a teacher learns a students threatened one of their classmates with a gun, the proposal would force that teacher to contact the principal. After that, the principal would have to contact the family members involved.

Davidsmeyer filed this bill after he heard of a bullying incident, where a student threatened another kid with a gun. When the kid told the teacher of this incident, they did not report it to the principal.

The Republican lawmaker wanted a plan to reduce school gun violence while not impeding on Illinoisan Second Amendment rights.

“I hope all legal gun owners would be in the same boat and say if we can make sure these horrible incidents no longer happen, our gun rights will not be under attack,” Davidsmeyer said.

In theory, Davidsmeyer’s proposal makes a lot of sense. We’ve seen incidents around the country where school officials failed to report students bringing guns on campus to authorities, but unfortunately that includes school principals as well as teachers. 

If it were my kid who’d been threatened with physical harm at school, whether it was with a gun, knife, or a baseball bat, I would definitely want to hear about it from the school. I would also, however, like the police to at least be made aware of the incident, which isn’t currently required in Davidsmeyer’s legislation. 

The proposal wasn’t called to a vote, as Davidsmeyer wants school districts opinions on the bill before going forward. He also said he may add law enforcement in the plan. They would only be able to have a conversation about if the family knows the student making the threat has easy access to a firearm.

Now, the reporting here is a little confusing, but if law enforcement can only get involved if the family of the student who was threatened knows that the aggressor has “easy access to a firearm” then that provision is going to be of little-to-no use for police or the victim. I completely understand Davidsmeyer’s concern that gun-owning parents could have their firearms confiscated based on nothing more than allegations that their kid threatened to shoot another student, but honestly, in this day and age it’s not that difficult for anyone to gain access to a gun if they don’t mind breaking the law. All Davidsmeyer has to do is look at the number of juveniles in Chicago who are caught illegally possessing a gun to realize that access is easy once thefts, straw purchases, and the black market come into play. 

That being said, Davidsmeyer should still be applauded for trying to improve student safety without infringing on the rights of Illinois gun owners, even if his own bill could use a little tweaking. If more lawmakers in Springfield had his same mindset the state would be much better off, but unfortunately the prevailing philosophy in the statehouse is that it’s not just possible to ban our way to safety, but that it’s necessary to curtail the right to keep and bear arms in order to prevent the criminal misuse of firearms.