OP-ED: School Shootings in America

For decades now American children have had to deal with school shootings. There’s no end in sight to this issue either; more school shootings happen every year despite what is being done to prevent them. But, if what’s being done now isn’t working, what should be done instead? It seems as though nothing can fix the issue, but there has to be something. Too many kids are dying from something that shouldn’t be a problem. 

School shootings have been a huge concern in America for years, far more than in any other country. Why are school shootings such an issue here then? The most likely reason is that many Americans are hesitant to change gun laws. Other countries, such as New Zealand and Norway, changed their gun laws after one mass shooting, not even a school shooting. Yet, with the hundreds of school shootings that have occurred in the United States, there still hasn’t been any major gun control legislation. 

Many Americans are still holding on to the antiquated idea that guns equal freedom. The reality is, guns don’t mean freedom. They hurt people; they take lives; they cause problems.  

Another problem is that the topic isn’t brought up as much as it should be, both in the media and in schools.

Major media only discusses the topic when there’s been a new shooting, and even then they don’t discuss the actual issue. They talk about what has happened, but never say anything about what can be done to fix the problem. 

Schools aren’t any better, they tend to avoid the subject as much as they can. Many schools have policies in place for such an event, yet there is hardly any discussion of those protocols. 

Aurora Public Schools is guilty of this too. Recently, Kevin Childs, the APS Security Director, decided to implement a new safety protocol. Posters were put up in schools across the district with the new policy, but students weren’t notified about the change for over a week. Here at Rangeview we were told about the change during class meetings that took place when we came back from winter break. However, many students didn’t attend these meetings. Those students most likely still don’t know about the change, months after it has occurred. We can’t be expected to notice something so important to our safety, it has to be directly shown to and explained to us to take effect. 

There needs to be more emphasis put on safety procedures in schools. If students don’t know what to do in such an event, what use were the protocols? Every student needs to be educated about them for them to be effective. The best solution for this would be to practice the different levels of lockdowns more often. As is, Rangeview only practices lockdowns twice a year, and we haven’t practiced this one yet. 

This lack of practice can be detrimental to the students who join mid-year. If they don’t get the practice needed and don’t understand or know the proper protocols then they won’t be able to do the right thing if a situation arises. Every student should know how to properly respond in case anything does happen.

The sad thing about school shootings now is that it is more a matter or when rather than if. With the abundance of school shootings in recent years, every school is likely to experience a shooting at some point. It’s a horrible reality, but ignoring it doesn’t make the issue go away.

Schools that train their students properly are going to perform far better than those that don’t. However, according to EducationWeek, “One in five school police officers say their school is not prepared to handle an active shooter situation.” Schools not being prepared can be a huge issue, especially if it is the Student Resource Officers that aren’t prepared. 

This was the case in 2018 with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting (also known as the Parkland High School Shooting). The first officer to arrive was Scot Peterson, an SRO at the school. He stood outside of the building where shots were being fired for 48 minutes, even after other officers had arrived. In that time seventeen people were killed by the gunman. 

In the aftermath, Peterson was tried for seven counts of felony child neglect, three misdemeanor counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury. The issue is, Peterson was doing what he thought was right. He had only taken three active shooter training courses over the course of his 28-year career. These courses were only a few hours long and didn’t adequately prepare Peterson, or any other officers, for real-world situations. Peterson himself didn’t even recall the training that he went to. 

So, on the day of the shooting, Peterson was forced to make a tough decision. He had to choose whether to go into an active shooter situation by himself, or he had to wait and learn more about the situation. He chose that second option, as did many other officers that day. Peterson was the only one who was put on trial even though other officers did the same thing. 

Most school resource officers just aren’t properly trained to handle such a situation. This lack of knowledge only contributes to the ever-growing problem. Officers need so much more training than they are given. 

However, this is incredibly difficult to do. School resource officers have to do many different things and can’t focus their entire attention on this type of thing. The only people who are truly able to diffuse an active shooter situation are SWAT officers, and they have to go through far more training than a school resource officer would have the time for. SWAT officers are trained for one specific situation, whereas SROs have to be prepared for a multitude of things. If they devote too much time to training for one specific situation, their ability to help elsewhere will diminish. 

Many students are also uneducated which only adds to the situation. Most don’t pay attention to current events, such as school shootings. 

In January, there was a school shooting at Perry High School in Perry Iowa. Six people were injured in that shooting and two, including the school’s principal, were killed. Yet, even days after the incident, many students at Rangeview didn’t know that the shooting ever took place. This is very concerning because if students don’t hear about the school shootings that are happening elsewhere in the country, they may not realize that such a thing could happen to them. But what can be done about this?

Student Media often doesn’t get enough viewership, so their publishing of vital information doesn’t aid very much. Most teenagers now don’t watch news broadcasts on TV anymore, so that isn’t a reliable way for them to get information either. The most common way for teens to get news is from social media. However social media is very unreliable, and features a lot of misinformation. Even if students do hear about school shootings from social media the information they get is often limited and doesn’t help them become more educated. 

However, there is seemingly no way to remedy the situation. Students will ignore anything that they don’t want to hear about, and most of them don’t want to hear about school shootings. Many find the topic to be too intense and choose to avoid it at all costs. But this is part of why these shootings keep happening. So many kids choose to block out what’s happening around them and they fail to see warning signs. They’ll spend so much time looking at their phones that they won’t notice a classmate acting strange. Even if they do notice, many kids will just brush it off as nothing instead of telling a trusted adult. Sometimes students will even post their intentions on social media, only to be ignored and not taken seriously. 

It is far better to report a threat that turns out to be fake than to have a threat that isn’t reported turn out to be true. So, if you see something, say something. It may be cliche but it can save lives and prevent more school shootings from happening. 

Additionally, with the internet, it is far too easy to access school schedules and protocols. Everything is published online for anyone to see. Sure, this can be useful for parents and even for students, but it also makes it so that a school shooter can know exactly when to attack (i.e. during passing periods). 

This could be catastrophic, yet many don’t seem to realize that. For example, in 2019 a woman, Sol Pais, traveled to Colorado and immediately bought guns and ammunition. Pais was obsessed with the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Because of how every school has their schedules published online, she could have in theory gone to any school in Colorado and targeted them at a vulnerable time. This in addition to her behavior prompted schools all across the state to be closed while the police were unsure about her location. 

Posting the safety protocol online has the same problem, although to a lesser extent. Most anyone who has been in a public school in the past 20 years will know the basic protocol for a school shooter. They’ll know that the students are hiding in classrooms. Schools act like no one will ever figure out that plan, but the thing is everyone already knows it. 

It doesn’t help that most school shooters are teenagers who are currently attending the school they target, or they’re former students. Oftentimes these students were bullied in their schools. Rather than turning to school staff, these students go online. There, some end up either getting bullied more or getting egged on to commit the terrible act. 

Dylan Butler, the Perry High School Shooter, fell into this category of students. He and his sister were severely bullied and the only way he saw out was to shoot classmates before killing himself with the same gun. Butler isn’t the only school shooter to do this, many of the other perpetrators were in the same boat. 

Maybe more emphasis should be put on the fact that schools have resources for people who are struggling with such issues. However, not every school even offers help. In Butler’s case, he tried reaching out for help at school but his concerns were left unanswered and no one tried to help his situation. This happens to so many students, and if more schools would provide better resources, there would probably be fewer incidents like that in Iowa. 

In 2023, 38 school shootings occurred, and while this number is alarming, it is actually lower than the number of shootings in 2022. There were a total of 51 shootings that year, which was a record high. This is under the definition of one other person than the shooter being injured on school property when school is in session or during a school sponsored event. Over one-third of the shootings in 2023 were at an after school event, most usually basketball games. 

Since the number in 2023 was lower, this could become a positive trend. Maybe these new protocols are working and that’s why fewer school shootings are happening. We won’t be able to know if this is a trend until a few years from now. However, it does provide a sense of hope. 

This hope doesn’t mean that we should stop striving towards safer schools. There is still plenty of work to be done. Our goal shouldn’t be to lower school shootings, it should be to stop them altogether.