By RICHARD BORDELON

OPINION EDITOR

Education is the key to many problems in this country.

While Republicans claim that the possible gun control laws and many of the proposed executive orders concerning firearms are an affront to civil liberties, they, consumed by this fight, fail to see the link between violence and education. This debate, however, does nothing to curb the violence in the murder capital of the country, Chicago. Banning the manufacture of assault weapons and limiting clips with a large capacity of bullets, which many Democrats have argued will reduce gun violence, may have a small affect, but the focus, above all, must be fixing the broken American education system, which is lagging behind those of much of the Western world.

In an article for The Huffington Post that discusses the direct relationship between education and gun violence in Chicago, Ximena Beltran writes, “We want killers punished to the full extent of the law after committing a crime, instead of investing in preventive measures through education, after school programs and mentoring to curtail the violence on Chicago’s streets before it even begins.”

If the Democratic party wants to curb gun violence, its lawmakers need to realize that the solution is not striving for laws that limit the manufacture of assault weapons and certain kinds or quantities of bullets. Neither is the solution debating the constitutionality of these laws with opponents. All of Congress needs to realize the importance of funding education and educational programs.

Regardless of whether preventative gun control measures actually work or whether or not they are constitutional, education is a preemptive tool that can be used to end the violence before the thought of violence even begins.  Background checks and armed guards at every school could be an answer, but at that point, we have already gone too far.  By only trying to stop the violence itself with bans, we are acknowledging that we are too powerless to prevent the attitudes of the perpetrators.

Both the White House and Republican leadership are so dead-set on a futile debate over whether the federal government should or should not restrict gun sales that they fail to realize the implications of their actions.

Beltran continues, “[Killers] get to that point through neglect and a broken educational system.”

In a speech this past week in Chicago, Obama even said, “This is not just a gun issue. It’s also an issue of the kinds of communities that we’re building, and for that we all share responsibility as citizens to fix it.”

The government, however, must take the first step in building stronger communities with better schools. Republicans do not want to spend more money on education. During the presidential debates, Mitt Romney admitted that the country needs to do a “better job in education.” And so far, it seems like the two major parties would rather continue a gun debate that attempt to fix public education.

After many debates over the budget in 2011, Republicans in the House of Representatives restricted the accessibility of Pell Grants, which cover some college expenses for the poorest college-bound Americans.

According to Peter Kingkade of The Huffington Post, “Pell Grants currently cover the smallest portion of the cost of college in the program’s history.”  Furthermore, a study by the University of Alabama “concluded that year-round Pell Grants improve completion rates. It comes at a time when other recent studies have suggested that America has a ‘college dropout crisis.’”

Although many of the people who commit these capital crimes are neither college graduates nor interested in attending college in the first place, this legislative action shows a trend occurring in national politics. Congress is willing to spend less and less money on educating the population in exchange for prolonging one of the most contentious debates that exists in American political discourse.

Richard Bordelon, FCRH ’15, is a political science and history major from New Orelans, La.