Survivors of shootings in Stockton, Calif.; Sutherland Springs, Texas; and Nashville say good guys with guns are the antidote to bad guys with guns.
Editor’s note: The following story contains graphic descriptions of violence.
STOCKTON, Calif.—On Jan. 17, 1989, Rob Young happily walked to school sporting a brand-new pair of LA Gear tennis shoes he had received for Christmas. He still remembers how good those shoes felt on his 6-year-old feet.
Later that day, he sat under his desk and wondered if he was going to be in trouble over the blood soaking into his shoes. His best friend and fellow first-grader, Scotty, sat next to him, contemplating the gaping wound in his own leg.
“And that’s when he told me, ‘You know, Robbie, I think we’ve been shot,’” Young said.
The Stockton Schoolyard Shooting
On that foggy morning 35 years ago, as Young and his friends played kickball, a disaffected loner sprayed the Cleveland Elementary School playground in Stockton, California, with bullets from an AK-style semiautomatic rifle.
As children began running and screaming, Young felt something sweep his feet up over his head and then slam him to the ground as something impacted his chest. One of the bullets passed through his foot, narrowly missing the bones. A second bullet lodged in his chest, where it remains today.
Young said investigators believe the second bullet ricocheted off the ground before hitting him: a bullet of that caliber could have easily passed through his body if it hadn’t been slowed. Doctors determined that removing the bullet was too risky.
Five children were killed, and 30 other people, including a teacher, were injured.
The shooting was the impetus for California officials to write the state’s—and the nation’s—first ban on certain semiautomatic rifles, sometimes called “assault weapons.” But that was not the end of the response, the ripples of which are still being felt today.
Last September, President Joe Biden opened the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. He recently signed executive orders regulating homemade guns and promoting active shooter drills in schools. Vice President Kamala Harris has promised to do more if she is elected to replace her boss.
