School shootings are national security threat to US: article

NEW YORK - Beyond the damage wrought at home, US school shootings are a national security threat, devastating to the country's foreign policy and soft power, according to an article published on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday.

In the year since a gunman butchered 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the United States has suffered at least 40 school shootings, perhaps most notably at the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, and the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, said the article.

"A bipartisan gun deal was passed last June, but contained only modest provisions. The cycle -- horrendous violence, a clamor for change, and then a steady fading from public view -- was thus repeated numerous times, each new round of gunfire offering another thundering reminder to American children and young adults that they have been left alone on the frontlines of our nation's love affair with guns," said the article.

Perhaps the most tragic part of each of these latest shootings was how utterly unsurprising they were -- how utterly prepared the students were for their fate and how utterly defenseless they were against the wrath of an AR-15, the article noted.

"Students in the United States are now conditioned to believe it is a question of when, not if, they will find themselves the target of a school shooting," the article said.

The sober lesson and sad reality: there is absolutely no good reason for US students, at any school or level of education, to comfortably believe they are safe from gun violence, it added.