3 Lessons (not) Learned from Allen, TX and Serbian School Shooting

A 13-year-old student walks into Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary in Serbia with two handguns and shoots 16 people — 9 fatally — in less than 2 minutes. A man gets out of his car at the door to a mall in Allen, TX with an AR-15 rifle and shoots 15 people — 8 fatally — within seconds. After another week of senseless gun violence claiming the lives of innocent people across the world, we face the same question. Why does this keep happening?

First and unavoidable reason is that unrestricted access to military-grade weapons enables anyone to kill a bunch of random people in seconds. We also must face the reality that most of our efforts to prevent mass shootings by adding physical security are misguided and generally ineffective.

Here are three lessons that probably won’t be learned from the Allen, TX mall shooting and Serbian school shooting.

1. Allen, TX: Shooter Only Needs Seconds

Mall had security guards (one of the victims killed) and a police officer who happened to be right there to kill the shooter within seconds. Unfortunately, a couple seconds is all the time that someone with a semi-auto rifle needs to shoot 15 people. No amount of ballistic glass, panic rooms, metal detectors, or armed security would prevent this attack. The quick response stopped this attack from being worse because the shooter had eight 30 round magazines on his chest and more guns in his car. It still wasn’t quick enough to help the first 15.

2. Serbia: Rarely Just a School Shooting

School shooter had 4 Molotov cocktails that he didn’t ignite because students had already fled through a backdoor in the classroom. School shootings are rarely planned as just a shooting. Classroom lockdown/barricade procedures are the worst possible action to take if an attacker is planning to ignite flammable liquids or detonate IEDs. School security procedures continue to be based on assumptions and personal assertions instead of the actual details from analyzing these attacks.

3. Allen, TX: Ultimate Insider Threat

Shooter was former-military (discharged for mental illness) and a licensed, firearms-trained private security officer in Texas. The worst-case scenario ‘insider threat’ for a school shooting is an armed security guard at the school committing the attack. This guy could have been paid to be inside a school with a gun.

Schools all over Texas are contracting armed private security. If the state licensing process and employer’s background checks missed his military discharge and extensive Neo-Nazi social media posts, who else is working inside schools right now?

Same Lessons (not) Learned

The same types of attacks continue to happen over and over despite billions of dollars invested into physical security to stop them. Security can respond to an active shooter, but can rarely prevents one. When dozens of shots are fired within seconds during a surprise attack, it’s already too late.

The best solutions are crisis intervention and threat assessment programs that can spot red flags and remove access to firearms before someone walks into a mall or school with a gun. The most important thing to remember is there’s no simple solution that can be purchased to stop the next mass shooting.

David Riedman is the founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database and a Ph.D. student at the University of Central Florida. To support the K-12 School Shooting Database and The Violence Project, please donate.