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.
