What The Hell America!

For almost three hours, Linda McMahon sat through a confirmation hearing last month in which senators pressed her on everything from teacher pay to transgender athletes. But none from either party asked her about school shootings.

That’s a glaring oversight, according to some leaders working to reduce youth gun violence, while others say that fears about the Department of Education’s possible closure so dominated the hearing that there was little time to question McMahon about the full spectrum of education topics. Confirmed as education secretary on March 3, it’s unclear how McMahon will address the gun violence epidemic, but her previous comments on gun control and the White House’s actions on the issue so far suggest to prevention advocates that this administration won’t make it a priority — potentially endangering youth, domestic violence victims and other vulnerable groups.

“The No. 1 concern amongst American families is making sure we have safe classrooms,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, a nonprofit organization working to improve educational outcomes and policies for children and families. “Can we keep our children alive in America’s classrooms? The idea that we would not even ask the next U.S. secretary of education about what she plans to do to keep our classrooms safer is ridiculous.”

Rodrigues, who was in the room during the Senate confirmation hearing in February, said that President Donald Trump’s plans to dismantle the Department of Education make it imperative to know McMahon’s approach to school gun violence. On Tuesday, McMahon announced that the agency will eliminate over 1,300 workers, nearly half of its staff, heightening concerns about its potential demise. Twenty-one attorneys general in Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration over the layoffs on Thursday, arguing that eliminating the staffers was “illegal and unconstitutional.”

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and teens, based on data from the Centers for Disease for Control and Prevention, and disproportionately kills youth of color. School shootings have steadily increased over time, with 39 school shootings recorded this year, according to the K-12 Shooting Database, which tracks gun violence incidents on campuses. 

McMahon should have been asked “how she plans to be able to address these very real and very serious issues without having a U.S. Department of Education that is working with states and working with districts,” Rodrigues said. 

The Department of Education did not respond by publication time to The 19th’s request for comment about McMahon’s plans on gun violence.  

During her 2017 confirmation hearing, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a Trump nominee, suggested that guns might protect students from grizzly bears, leading to widespread ridicule. Last year, McMahon took to social media to express her concerns with red flag laws, or Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO), that allow guns to be confiscated from individuals considered a threat to themselves or others. 

ERPO, she wrote, “could easily be used to REMOVE Firearms from Law-Abiding Citizens. Chicago and NYC have some of the strictest ‘gun laws’ in the country and yet they also have some of the highest gun violence. Recently 9 people were killed in 24 hours in Chicago. A pregnant mom was seriously injured and her 11-year-old son who was trying to protect her was killed.”

McMahon argued that it would have been more effective to keep the convicted felon who shot the mother and son in prison than risk removing firearms from individuals without criminal records. Her views appear to align with those of the president, who on February 7 issued an executive order directing the attorney general to review all regulations and policies created during President Joe Biden’s administration that purportedly infringe on the public’s rights to bear arms and to devise a plan to counteract such restrictions.  

“This administration has made it pretty clear that it is not looking to prioritize gun violence prevention, whether that’s in the nominees that it has put forward, including the education secretary, or the executive order on the Second Amendment that came out of the White House,” said Nina Vinik, founder and president of Project Unloaded, a Gen Z-focused gun violence prevention group. “The administration is looking to roll back the progress that’s been made over the last decade or more to reduce gun violence.”

Noah Lumbantobing, former director of communications for March for Our Lives (MFOL), a student-led gun violence prevention organization, said he suspects Trump’s administration will reverse the policies the group supports to retaliate against the Biden administration.

“It’s so clearly about vengeance and not at all about children’s safety, so that’s scary,” said Lumbantobing, who transitioned out of MFOL on Wednesday to step into a new role in the gun safety movement. “We still don’t know what’s going to be on the chopping block, but we have no doubt that he’s going to undo a lot of the things that we spent a lot of time fighting for, and even more importantly, things that have saved lives.”

In 2024, gun violence incidents on campuses dropped to 331 from 349 the prior year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. Lumbantobing attributes the decrease in shootings to the “common-sense life-saving solutions” the Biden administration adopted. That includes an executive order Biden issued that expanded the definition of a gun dealer since some gun sellers were not only going undetected but also neglecting to perform background checks on customers. 

“Now, they do have to do background checks and to act responsibly,” Lumbantobing said. “That’s going to get undone. So there’s a lot of danger here, both in undoing some of the laws and also just selectively not enforcing laws that are on the books. It’s going to kill children, and it’s just for partisan gain.”

He also has concerns about how relaxing gun restrictions will affect victims of domestic violence, a problem the Biden administration addressed, in part, through tougher background checks.

“The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act tightened loopholes for dating partners to not be able to obtain firearms and potentially harm or kill their partners,” Lumbantobing said of the federal law passed in 2022 that provides states with funding to develop red flag laws and other interventions. If the Department of Justice “chooses not to enforce the laws on the books, no one’s looking out for victims of domestic abuse,” he added.

At least 110 domestic violence-related shootings have occurred at schools from 1966 to the present, the K-12 School Shooting Database reports. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act routes resources to intervention programs to reduce gun crimes, but Lumbantobing said he isn’t sure if that will happen under the Trump administration. He does give Trump credit, however, for supporting a ban on bump stocks, gun accessories that essentially turn semi-automatic rifles into automatic weapons. In 2017, during Trump’s first term, a gunman used bump stocks to kill 60 people and wound hundreds of others at a Las Vegas music festival.

“So there’s some hope that we have that he’ll not be as constrained by GOP orthodoxy there, but it’s not looking good,” Lumbantobing said. “He moves with the wind.”

That the Trump administration has chosen not to continue the Office of Gun Violence Prevention established during Biden’s tenure has also worried gun control supporters. Although Trump did not formally eliminate the office, he has yet to hire personnel to maintain it, Lumbantobing said. The office no longer has a functioning website either.

“What’s so dangerous is that we may not notice it today or tomorrow, but in a year, two years, whenever the next mass shooting happens, I think we’ll be able to look and see it’s because Trump stopped enforcing the law,” Lumbantobing said. 

The Office of Gun Violence Prevention represented a bipartisan approach to gun safety because it allowed the White House to focus on prevention in a holistic way that drew on government resources but did not require the creation of any new laws, Lumbantobing said. 

“How do we fix this … within the constraints that we have? They made massive progress on that,” he said. “Getting rid of that office is a refutation of that very premise, and I think it is a real dangerous one. If you can’t agree with us that children dying is a bad thing, boy, are we in trouble.”

Several states, including California, Massachusetts, Maryland and Wisconsin, have opened — or passed legislation to open — their own offices of gun violence prevention, suggesting that states and not the federal government will take the lead on curbing gun violence prevention during the Trump administration.

“I think we’re going to continue to see a world where gun safety exists in some places and not others,” Lumbantobing said. “That’s not the America that young people deserve.”

Although he would have liked to see senators ask McMahon more questions about school shootings during her confirmation hearing, he said their focus on the potential abolishment of the Department of Education was appropriate. Getting rid of that federal agency would be an attack on gun safety because of the work it does to reduce school shootings.

“The Department of Education has a critical role in that work and could have a bigger role,” Lumbantobing said. “Just last year, we worked with Secretary [Miguel] Cardona to do a safe storage campaign to encourage parents. We understand that people are going to own guns. There’s nothing wrong with that if you own a legally obtained firearm. But it’s important that folks store those firearms safely because, otherwise, they show up in places we don’t want, in school shootings, in instances of domestic violence or interpersonal violence, even amongst young people or kids shooting themselves accidentally.”

While March for Our Lives collaborated with Cardona on a safe storage campaign, Lumbantobing does not anticipate engaging in such work with McMahon.

“She has expressed no interest in that,” he said. “We would love to, but she won’t. Trump has come out and said that he wants to be the very best friend possible to the NRA [National Rifle Association], so we know how she’ll approach it, whether she takes an ax to the Department of Education or just starts to unwind some of the pivotal policies that the Department of Ed pushes to keep kids safe.”

Trump’s Cabinet picks are not the only concern of gun violence prevention groups. They also fear the impact of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision that rescinded the federal restriction on 18-to-20-year-olds buying handguns. More than one mass school shooter has fallen into this age group. In 2022, an 18-year-old gunman massacred 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Four years before that, a 19-year-old fatally shot 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In 2012, a 20-year-old shooter struck down 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

“For the Fifth Circuit to say that trying to address the scourge of gun violence and its impact on young people with reasonable age restriction on handgun purchases is not permissible under the Second Amendment is potentially a real setback in terms of trying to address youth gun violence in this country” Vinik said.

Without being able to rely on government intervention or cooperation, gun prevention advocates are coming up with their own solutions to address youth gun violence. Project Unloaded, for example, hopes to shift the culture around gun use by providing young people with facts and figures about the drawbacks of firearms, including increased risk of homicide, suicide and accidents. 

“When we give them that information in a way that’s really engaging and accessible, they do increase their awareness of what those risks are, and it does lead them, in many cases, to shift away from a desire to use guns in the future,” Vinik said.

Since young people often learn about guns online, particularly on social media or through gaming platforms, Project Unloaded recently launched a campaign called “Leave Guns in the Game” that involves a collaboration with about a dozen gamers who are also content creators on Tiktok, YouTube and Instagram. The campaign, Vinik said, aims to instill this message into youth: “Play hard when you’re in a video game, but in real life, at home, in your community, you’re safer without guns.”