No More Hiding in Bathrooms
Thirteen Year Old Tells How She's Impacted By Gun Violence
BAR HARBOR—Now thirteen years old, Bar Harbor’s Frances Stockman said that she has been taught from a very young age that someone with a gun could potentially come into her school and use that gun on her, her classmates, or their teachers and staff.
“In first grade I was using the bathroom when an active shooter alarm went off,” she told the thirty or so people gathered on the Village Green at a gun-safety rally organized by the YWCA MDI, Saturday afternoon.
When she left the stall and peeked out of the bathroom, the school was completely silent. There was no one in the hallway. She was alone. Scared, she sprinted back, tripped on a rug, and a teacher opened the classroom door and let her in.
“The experience changed me,” the Conners Emerson School seventh grader said at the Saturday rally.
And then, when she was seven, a woman threatened gun violence on multiple schools in the Colorado area where she then lived. Those schools threatened included Stockman’s.
“You’re in a dark corner or closet, shoulder to shoulder with your classmates, all the blinds are closed,” and you are hoping that it’s a drill, just a drill, she said.
Combine that threat with the multiple active shooter drills that she and others endured and it’s had an impact, she said.
“Why is our education and lives threatened just for going to school and why haven’t we done anything to fix it?” she asked.
The threat of school shootings and the psychological impact that they can cause was not the only focus of the rally or the events of the day. The Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Police Departments were part of a gun collection day occurring across the state, which had many departments involved, according to Lynn Ellis, the treasurer of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition who also spoke at the event.
According to Bar Harbor Sergeant Doug Brundett, the combined departments received one gun during the day.
“We’re losing people to gun violence each and every day,” Ellis said.
That violence might be from a mass shooting event like in Lewiston last year when a man killed 18 people and injured 13 others, but it also might be from a domestic violence incident or suicide.
“We have a very high rate in Maine of suicide due to firearms,” Ellis said.
Everytown writes that 89% of Maine’s gun deaths each year are suicides, which is approximately 131 people every year. It also writes, “In Maine, an average of 8 children and teens die by guns every year, and 82% of these deaths are suicides. In the United States, 58% of all gun deaths among children and teens are homicides.”
According to an Associated Press article from November 2023, “Maine will invest $230 million in statewide suicide prevention and mental health awareness after a report found that more than 85 percent of gun deaths in 2020 were suicides.
“The state report released this week concluded that 132 of the 154 people killed by guns in 2020 died by suicide. According to the report, 118 of the suicides affected men.”
It wasn’t just about the past deaths and statistics that worried the speakers; it was the possibilities of more.
“Our friends, our neighbors, our fellow citizens could be slaughtered,” Susan Murphy said. The goal is to get people to contact legislators to protect children from trauma. “Stand in solidarity with us. Let’s end gun violence together.”
At the end of the rally, Murphy read off the names of those shot and killed in October 2023 in Lewiston. In April 2023, four were shot and killed in a Bowdoin home and then three more on I-295 near exit 15 by the same shooter. Those shot on the highway survived.
“Every firearm turned in is a gun off the streets,” Ellis said, and the take-back program occurs every two years.
In July a 72-hour wait period will go in effect because of new state legislation. That 72 hours is the time between when the gun is purchased and when it is given to the purchaser by the seller. Another state law, LD 2224, will expand background check requirements to include advertised firearm sales.
Deaths from guns, Ellis said, “can happen anytime, anywhere.”
“What happens here at home,” Murphy said, “it ripples out to the world.”
VOICE RECORDINGS
Apologies, it was quite windy and the amplification wasn’t quite the match for the wind.
Susan Murphy intro
Lynn Ellis remarks
Frances Stockman’s remarks
Susan Murphy’s closing remarks
Disclosure: Two of the people killed in Lewiston had been friends with my mother during her time in Lewiston immediately after I went to college there.
All photos: Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
For a suicide prevention hotline, call 888-568-1112 or 800-273-TALK (8255), or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
Maine Statistics
Everytown for Gun Safety; Gun Deaths, Gun Injuries and Economic Cost of Gun Violence by State
Maine CDC Annual Firearm Fatality Report, 2021 and 2020 data.
Everystat, Everytown for Gun Safety; Gun Homicide and Suicide Database by State and Nationally
The Educational Fund for Gun Violence; Demographics of Maine Gun Deaths
FBI, National Instant Criminal Background Check System, Data by State and Month
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I'm not quite sure which represents the greater harm to children, the potential of someone with a gun shooting them, or the terror of being constantly told that someone "might" shoot them? I am certainly no math whiz but I have a basic understanding of the laws of probability and my guess is that Bar Harbor children stand a greater chance of being injured or killed by a bolt of lightning than of being shot while sitting in class at Conners Emerson. That's not to say that it's totally impossible. Some nut case eager to capture the fame and notoriety of being a "schoolhouse shooter" might one day show up here but it's highly unlikely. What is far, far more likely is that young children constantly told that a shooter might show up at any minute will come to see the world as a very dangerous place. That sense of impending disaster can easily lead to an adversity to any & all potential risks that will wind up crippling a child for life. Sadly America is becoming a country where fear and a crippling desire for a "risk free" environment has become an insatiable driver of everything we do. A willingness to take risks is what enabled the founders of this country, this state, and this community to create what far too many folks these days take for granted. An unwillingness to take risks, an insistence upon a totally safe lifestyle, can easily destroy a community, a state, or a nation.