Better Solutions to American School Mass Shootings
The current solutions are failing, and the need for alternatives is urgent
Uvalde. Parkland. Santa Fe. Oxford. Sandy Hook. West Nickel Mines. Little Rock.
These places are scattered across the United States, having different communities, cultures, and economic environments. But they have one thing in common: They have all been scenes of horrific school shootings. Since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Little Rock, Colorado, which shocked the entire world, these tragedies have happened over and over again.
It’s almost always young men who could easily and legally purchase a gun who choose to storm a school and take out their frustration and resentment against themselves and the outside world against one of society’s most innocent and helpless groups by the most extreme means possible. In these killings, it is almost impossible to hold the shooters accountable for their murders because they often choose to commit suicide or are shot dead; and even when they are held to account, no punishment for the killers can bring back the lives of those who were killed. These wounds do not heal; they only continue to fester.
It happened yet again on October 24 in St. Louis. A 19-year-old Central High School for the Visual and Performing Arts graduate armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and 600 rounds of ammunition stormed into his alma mater on that morning, shooting and killing Alex Bell, a 15-year-old student, and Jean Kuczma, the physical education teacher who was trying to protect Alex from the bullets with her own body. School security officers who arrived swiftly on the scene killed the gunman before he could pull the trigger again, less than 14 minutes before the shooting began. In that short duration of time, the gunman had already claimed two lives and injured seven people. In his last words, which were found by police, the shooter lamented his lack of friends, family, close relationships, and social life, and considered his circumstances the “perfect storm” for a mass shooting.
People are getting tired of this continuous gun-fueled deadly epidemic. In the wake of the Columbine and Sandy Hook shootings, many schools in the United States have taken costly and unconventional measures to ensure the safety of students. In any other country on Earth, these measures would sound absurd, including but not limited to hiring school safety officers who are primarily active or retired police officers, participating in regular shooting prevention drills, requiring students to carry clear or bulletproof backpacks to school, mandating security checks through metal detectors before classes begin, and locking all doors most of the time to avoid shooter break-ins. Central High School for the Visual and Performing Arts did all of the above and still could not prevent the tragedy. For all students and teachers attending schools in the United States. It’s as if a mass shooting is not a matter of probability, but a matter of time.
A database created by the Washington Post days before the St. Louis shooting shows that more than 320,000 students in the United States have experienced gun violence in their schools since the Columbine shooting in 1999. In those 23 years, 188 people have been killed in school shootings and 389 others have been injured. Some incidents have been reported nationally, prompting mourning and reflection from political figures, such as in Uvalde and Parkland, while others were only covered on local television or in newspapers and received no attention because the number of casualties was not as high.
Many of the shooters were very young; the median age of school shooters is only 16 years old. In any state, it is illegal to possess or purchase a gun at that age. They either acquired the gun through the negligence of a guardian or other adults, or they acquired it through social media platforms and the same friends that teens often use to obtain alcohol or drugs.
Mass shootings are uniquely American
Regular mass shootings, whether in schools or elsewhere, are a uniquely American social problem; such incidents are much rarer in any other country. This sad reality has existed for decades, and during that time many Americans have done everything they can to avoid acknowledging it.
Researchers have studied the unique circumstances of mass shootings in the United States extensively. Two researchers, criminologist Adam Lankford in 2016 and sociologist Jason Silva in 2022, found that easy access to firearms is likely the cause of frequent mass shootings. Silva’s research showed that in half of the 36 developed countries, there has not been a mass shooting since 2000, whereas in the U.S., there have been mass shootings every single year since data on them have been collected. Both studies also show that the perpetrators in America often use more than one weapon, guns being so plentiful in this country and that casualties are higher than in any other country. America is one of the few countries that have loosened their restrictions on firearms during the past few decades.
The number of legally owned guns in circulation in the U.S. was 390 million in 2018, which is about 125% of the country’s population, or one in five households. Studies have shown that homicide and suicide rates are higher when people live in houses where there are firearms.
Gun rights are championed by a wide variety of social and cultural groups, not just the National Rifle Association. For the members of many of these groups, guns have become a necessary fixture. This is in contrast to the culture of most other developed countries. Australia, Finland, Britain, New Zealand, and Canada have all passed laws regulating purchase and ownership of firearms; with rare exceptions, the United States has not. One exception in the U.S. is the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was passed after the horrific Uvalde shooting and which would give billions of dollars in funding for community violence intervention, mental health awareness training, closing loopholes, and improving red flag laws. However, a Supreme Court ruling, NYSRPA v. Bruen was decided two days before the law was passed. This ruling undermines efforts by individual states to pass harsher restrictions on guns. It was cited in a recent ruling by a Northern District of New York judge, who struck down the prohibition on carrying firearms in New York near sensitive areas such as museums, theatres, and public spaces where alcohol is sold or where there are services to benefit children.
The enthusiastic gun lobby and the lack of resolve to do something about the gun problem have prevented most gun reform. Years before NYSRPA v. Bruen, District of Columbia v. Heller had already redefined the qualifications for gun ownership, making anyone who could pass a background check the equivalent of the “well-regulated militia” referenced in the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. This gave free rein to the gun industry by making it impossible for any individual region to issue laws banning handguns.
Why current measures don’t work
Around 95% of all American public schools are conducting active shooter drills, preparing staff members and students for an armed intruder and sometimes even including a “gunman” shooting pellets. Both survivors of school shootings and gun control advocates have expressed frustration over the lack of effectiveness of these drills. They are ineffective because school shootings happen so quickly and are so chaotic and loud that no amount of training can safeguard the children.
For young students and their teachers, the need to defend themselves against the possibility of fatal danger at any time will undoubtedly cause psychological wounds that are difficult to heal. The drills are intense, and teachers have told the media they don’t know how to comfort students during them. They know that saying “it won’t happen” or “this might save your life” is lying to them. Furthermore, many perpetrators have participated in such drills themselves and can use the training to spot potential weaknesses they can attack.
A second method for preventing school shootings, called “hardening” uses state grants to hire more safety officers, install surveillance cameras, and implement and use metal detectors. In many shootings, this increased security yielded positive results. However, school security officers and even police officers are sometimes too cowardly to risk their lives to protect students. In the Uvalde attack, for example, not only did dozens of police and school security officers refuse to enter the classroom for 40 minutes after they arrived, but a Texas Department of Public Safety officer who was on the scene said privately afterward that he did not choose to break into the classroom because his children were not there.
Perhaps the worst idea among all of the current measures to prevent school shootings is arming teachers. Trump floated the idea after meeting with survivors of the Parkland shooting in 2018, and the Florida Legislature considered such a bill at the same time, but it failed due to widespread public opposition. A poll that year conducted by the National Education Association showed that educators overwhelmingly oppose this idea. On a day when there is no shooter, having a gun in the classroom is likely to result in a serious accidental discharge, especially for classrooms full of younger students. Even if a shooter does break into a school, the speed with which things happen is likely to prevent a timely response by an armed teacher. If school safety officers whose daily job is to confront attackers have failed in past cases, why would anyone believe that someone who tends to pick up chalk rather than pull the trigger would do a better job in this situation?
There is no easy solution
For those unfortunate enough to experience a mass shooting, nothing will ever be the same. For children, it is often difficult to understand why this happened, and it takes a long time to cope with the loss of a friend, teacher, or family member. For adults, coping with trauma like this isn’t any easier. Many survivors suffer from severe post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after experiencing such events and even commit suicide, unable to bear the pain of living without loved ones.
For them, and for all who are fed up with the current situation, we must find more effective solutions to gun violence. Nobody should have to hide under a desk as bullets fly through their classrooms. Nobody should have to attend a funeral for a loved one whose life was cut short by a bullet.
Politicians need to eliminate “thoughts of prayers” from discussions about mass shooting. Conspiracy theorists should no longer be allowed to claim that these deaths are not real and have been concocted so that a tyrannical government can take away our guns.
But there are solutions that work
One proven method to prevent school shootings is to take action when a student is exhibiting idiosyncratic behavior, threatening others, or talking about suicide. The decline of mental health services and the increase in school safety officers is a dangerous trend.
Other solutions:
- Make it more difficult for at-risk youth to obtain firearms.
- Require parents to store their guns out of the reach of their children — or get rid of them.
- Have more thorough background checks so people with a history of mental health problems cannot obtain weapons through legal purchase.
In his book, “ Children Under Fire,” journalist John Woodrow Cox reported on the causes and consequences of the 2016 Townville Elementary School shooting. In this case, 14-year-old Jesse Osborne shot and killed his father in his home. He then went to the Townville Elementary playground, screamed “I hate my life,” and shot three children and a teacher, killing 6-year-old Jacob Hall. Jesse was a former student of the school who was once found with an ax and a machete in his backpack and was expelled. He was forced to work with his family at the chicken farm, which he hated because he loved animals.
Jesse had used a private chat group to text about his plans for the murders. In those texts, he estimated the time it would take the police to respond and figured he could kill 50 to 60 people in that time. He had read about and become obsessed with the Columbine shootings. He was sympathetic to the two killers in that massacre and saw himself and them as outcasts.
His plans were thwarted when his gun jammed. He was then tackled by a bystander and was arrested. Tried as an adult in court, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
I often think about this story every time I read about mass shootings in American schools. When I was in my freshman year in college, a mentally disturbed teenager had an argument with his mother, stole her handgun, and ran towards the direction of our campus. He was caught before he could arrive. In another story I have read in 2019, a football coach of a high school in Oregon was able to diffuse a school shooter with a shotgun in hand after he recognized the shooter as his former student, talked to him and hugged him. I believe in empathy as a powerful tool in cooling down the situation, but these incidents also make me worry about how many shootings could have happened if things didn’t go right.
Proper mental health resources in schools, which help at-risk students instead of just punishing them, more rigorous background checks, and bringing down the gun-rights culture — these three measures would reduce gun violence. Many countries have enacted such measures; the United States has not.
