A RADICAL SUGGESTION FOR DETERRING SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

I started this essay off with one point in mind, but as I wrote and researched it, another point made itself evident to me. I have found what I believe to be a previously-undiscovered method of deterring school shootings. I’ll first talk about the methods which have been bandied about in the press recently, and then I’ll disclose the new method of deterring school shootings which I have discovered.

What measures will best deter mass mayhem at schools? If by some form of magic, you could make all the guns in America disappear overnight, those determined to wreak havoc on schools would be deterred, but they would quickly turn to other means—like home made bombs, for instance. As Timothy McVeigh and the Austin bomber demonstrated, bombs are easily made from common ingredients. The worst mass killing at a school in American history was a bombing, not a shooting.

Someone determined to kill can inflict a lot of damage with something as low tech as a knife, as was done in the Franklin Regional school stabbing in 2014 which injured 27. The nightmare low-tech weapon for such a mass attack would probably be a katana, a saber, or even a machete. Killing sprees using swords were at one time common in some cultures, which gave us the term “running amok,” or “running amuck.” The DSM‑5 actually classifies “amok” as a form of dissociative disorder. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Abnormal and Clinical Psychology, 1:161.

Banning certain types of firearms will probably do as little to deter school shootings as Prohibition did to deter drunkenness. Under Prohibition, those who could live without drinking didn’t get drunk; but those who couldn’t live without drinking found a way. Banning the sale of AR-15’s and AK-47’s would do little to nothing about those guns already in circulation. Outlawing those guns in circulation will simply drive them underground, and a determined criminal will get access to such a gun anyhow. Assuming you could successfully ban all modern firearms, one who was intent on mass murder could simply gun up with half a dozen cap-and-ball revolvers as did William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson. A half-way competent machinist can build a firearm. I actually prosecuted a murder case where a man killed his wife with a gun he made from cast iron pipe. It shot a finishing nail punch which was ½” in diameter, and he thought it would be untraceable. As things turned out, it was easily traceable to his workshop, where we found all the ingredients.

I have suggested in previous posts that enhanced mental health screening would be the best method of identifying and neutralizing the threat from potential mass-shooters, and Florida’s recently-passed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act makes a valiant effort in that direction. The part of the act of which I was most skeptical was the provision for “arming teachers.” No offense to anyone, but as I recall my high school days, I wouldn’t trust most of my high school teachers with loaded firearms. (Especially the one who used to talk about lining his students up in front of a brick wall and machine gunning them). I was afraid that the act would simply provide for passing out guns to teachers as though they were passing out party favors. Reading the act has calmed my fears. The vetting, training, and retraining process that the act requires before allowing a non-law-enforcement school employee to go armed is rigorous. I think they ought to require all school resource officers to go through the same process as outlined in the act.

As was shown only recently in Maryland, an armed school security officer who is willing to confront a school shooter rather than stand outside the school counting his change while the shooting is in progress is the surest way to stop a school shooting. This was by no means an isolated incident, but when such incidents occur, they get downplayed. When an Arapaho County school shooter became aware that a deputy sheriff was coming to confront him, he committed suicide rather than face the deputy. Snopes.com questioned whether the imminent arrival of the deputy saved lives, saying that it was a “speculative notion” that imminent arrival of an armed officer hand anything to do with the shooter’s suicide. Other incidents where armed personnel successfully engaged school shooters include but are certainly not limited to: the Umpqua Community College shooting in 2015, the FSU library shooting in 2014, The Reynolds High School Shooting in 2014 (interestingly, although some media neglected to report that the shooter had committed suicide after being engaged by police, this fact was included in Gordon A. Crews, Critical Examinations of School Violence and Disturbance in K-12 Education, 216), the Seattle Pacific University shooting in 2014 (the building monitor used pepper spray and a flying tackle to subdue the shooter while he was reloading), and the Santa Monica College shooting in 2013 where John Zawahri started a killing spree with his parents and then went to a college campus to shoot at passing cars. He was killed by responding officers.

It cannot be denied that armed security personnel in schools can stop school shootings. How about deterring the shootings? They're not going to deter a school shooting if their presence and effectiveness are little-known facts. If they were well-known facts, I think that would serve as a deterrent.

A common theme I found in researching the shootings listed above was the reticence of the articles I read to say anything about the shooter being neutralized by the police. Perhaps one thing that can be done in order to deter future school shootings would be for the media to give wall-to-wall coverage of school shooters getting shot by security personnel similar to the wall-to-wall coverage they give to mass shootings. Would-be shooters who see massive coverage of the grief following a shooting are encouraged to go out and cause more grief. Would-be shooters who saw enough footage of school-shooters being stopped by armed officers might decide to go somewhere other than a school to do their mass shootings.

My previously undiscovered method of deterring school shootings, therefore, is this: Find some way to persuade the media to give massive publicity to the officers who neutralize school shooters, thereby demonstrating to potential school shooters that there is little to be gained beyond a shortened life-expectancy by running amok in a school.