In the aftermath of a deadly shooting, violent threats plague Kansas schools. Can our kids survive?

A nation awash in guns and mental health challenges has created an uneasy start to the school year in Kansas. (Getty Images)

Several weeks into a new academic year, threats of violence bubble under the surface for Kansas schools.

You have to be on alert for the headlines, which appear in disparate locations, from an array of outlets. But simple searches reveal a wave of threats made against K-12 schools, usually as rumors spread via social media. None of the threats have come to anything, thankfully, but they have left families shaken and uncertain.

Kansas schools have grappled with an epidemic of fear the past couple of weeks. And it shows few signs of abating.

Here’s a sample:

• Liberty Memorial Central Middle School student reports overhearing threat to school; threat deemed not credible (Lawrence Times, Sept. 18)
• Kansas law enforcement deal with string of school threats (KSNT-TV, Sept. 19)
• Police on alert after multiple recent school threats in NE Kansas (Manhattan Mercury, Sept. 20)
• Police across Kansas continue to investigate alleged school threats (Hutch Post, Sept. 27)
• Threats against Kansas City-area schools could cost districts hundreds of thousands of dollars (KCUR, Sept. 27)
• Student arrested after threat to shoot up Kansas high school homecoming dance (Wichita Eagle, Sept. 30)

These threats follow an actual shooting , on Sept. 4 at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Four people were killed and nine injured.

I don’t know what it says about our society that we apparently need to follow up actual horror and grief with manufactured trauma. But apparently we do. These false phone calls and online rumors take a real toll, too — not just on schools and law enforcement officers who have to get to the bottom of each case, but on students who have to grapple with the omnipresent threat of fatal violence in their schools.

That’s no way to learn. That’s no way to live. That’s no way to prepare for a life full of promise.

Here in Lawrence, where I live and where my son attends school, the superintendent and local police chief even put together a video for students on the subject. I’m glad they’re taking the situation seriously, but I hate that we’ve found ourselves at this place.

“Students, violent threats are no joke,” Police Chief Rich Lockhart explains. “So we’re asking you to report — not repost — and report that to an adult.”

Whenever we deal with this topic, particularly when it comes to guns, folks on the right and left will argue about causes. The right points to mental health problems in society, while the left points to the extreme abundance of guns.

I think they’re both right.

Listen, getting rid of guns would solve a vast majority of problems (I’ve called for repealing the Second Amendment , however unlikely that might be). But we also can’t ignore that the number of guns and our culture’s valorization of armed conflict has created generations of young people who see firepower as the way out of a problem. Video games, movies and music all reflect this reality. With that cultural underpinning, no wonder that those struggling with their mental health turn to fatal violence.

But acknowledging that reality won’t improve mental health or reduce the number of guns. Not anytime soon, at least.

I believe in the possibility of systemic change, and the ability of Kansans to make their towns and state and nation better. I still believe that, and fervently.

Yet I also know that when I wrote my first column on that subject, my first column as Kansas Reflector opinion editor, it was a three years ago and my son was still in grade school. Now he’s an eighth grader. Time passes quickly for parents and children, and before you know it a generation’s school experience has been shaped by the possibility of gun violence.

What’s more, real reassurance is impossible. These times force parents to lie to their children. We have to tell them that everything will be OK and that their schools and worlds will be safe from the insanity of a mass shooter.

We don’t know that.

And we can’t say that.

For those in this city or state or nation who prefer the right to carry arms to the right of children to live, shame on you. I hope that you will never have to experience — as I have — children streaming from an office, some of them wide-eyed and weeping, because we cannot protect them. I hope that you will never have to experience — as I blessedly have not — a school turned into a blood-soaked battleground .

Children deserve a better school experience, free of such threats. Let us one day prove worthy of them.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .