Another week passes, and we have another week where we see the aftermath of another school shooting in national news.
And we hear the same issues coming up for debate again. There’s gun control. There’s criticism about the reporting of school shootings. Bullying could be the issue. And maybe it’s a mental health issue. Or perhaps it’s because the schools have so many doors.
The thing is I think there’s s
ome merit to every legitimate cause of school shootings. First of all, every school shooting is different. The motivation for one person to act out could be different for another person to act out.
One person might be doing such an activity because they were ignored and wanted to get back at everyone who bullied him or her.
Another shooter may decide to do something like this just as a show of power and the fact that they think they could get away with it.
Other shooters leave obvious warning signs that they’re about to try something while others do it with little or no warning. Some shooters had easy access to weapons, while others did it in a much more covert way.
Some shooters had a history of acting out at school while others skirted below the surface of anyone knowing they existed. Some shooters knew the layout of the school well and took advantage of unguarded or unlocked doors while others came through the front door.
What I’m trying to say is that every shooting is very different from each other. We try to treat crimes with a blanket approach, saying that this one thing is going to stop the violence, but it’s never that simple.
The bottom line is that there’s no way to completely predict that someone is going to commit a crime of this magnitude, but there are things we can do to be vigilant to prevent it.
Schools could be a much safer place if there were fewer doorways accessible to the public, but you can’t have too few because it could hamper evacuation of the building during a fire.
We could do a better job of doing background checks for firearm transactions. We could release more funding to help with mental health issues. We could ramp up character education classes to help students be more aware of their actions and how they affect others.
We could do a better job of helping teachers, administrators, parents and students know what are warning signs and what to do if you start noticing them in a student. And we can continue to train for the worst, but we hope it never happens.
Any simple answer to school shootings isn’t a total fix, but a simple answer can be part of the solution.
Contact Brent at bmaze@-newtoncountyappeal.com.
