February 6, 2023 by Darren Pasek (’25)
Within the first week of 2023, a school shooting had already taken place. This time an atypical story enthralled the world. Just outside of Newport News, Virginia, a six-year-old boy shot and wounded his teacher during a lesson. Remarkably, she is in stable condition. Leading up to the shooting, the first grader had shown the weapon (a handgun) to several classmates throughout the day, and many of those who saw the gun reported their fears to the school administration. The administration did not thoroughly address the reports filed. The kid was searched, but nothing was found on him. Retrospectively, police said the kid could have simply put the gun elsewhere for a short time while he was being searched.
The weapon was legally purchased by the child’s mother. It is still unclear how the kid accessed the gun; the mother claimed the gun was secured and all legal safety protocol was followed. Obviously, though, unless the mother orchestrated the plan and gave her son the firearm, the protocol was in fact not followed and the gun was not secured. The kid was apprehended and is in a medical facility as investigations are underway. The school and administration themselves have restructured their leadership since the incident–the superintendent was fired, the elementary school principal resigned, and extreme caution is being taken regarding gun safety in the school district.
The controversies revolving around the precautions being set up in the aftermath of the tragedy are perhaps the most alarming parts of the story. Installing metal detectors, increasing presence of security on campus, providing special training, and offering other forms of preventative measures is very expensive and difficult to implement. As disturbing and tragic these instances of violence are, it is hard to convince taxpayers (and, for that matter, government officials who “spend” the tax money) to allocate money and time towards gun safety in schools.
In our school, for example, we see weak attempts at fulfilling state liability requirements by installing “stop the bleed” kits (essentially first aid kits) around the school as a means of treatment for gunshots. Our school also installed a school resource officer (SRO) (which has prompted a separate debate over officers’ roles in schools) who may or may not actually provide any safety compared to schools without a school resource officer. The National Association of School Resource Officers estimates 20% of K-12 schools have SROs, and at least four of the twenty-four school attacks in 2019 had SROs in place–meaning there was no notable improvement in deterrence of attacks when there was an SRO in the building.
Despite the nation as a whole suffering from gun violence, the odds of a school attack occurring in a single school are very low. In 2019 (the most recent year unaffected by Covid regulations) for example, twenty-four firearm attacks happened in K-12 schools or on a school bus and, in that same year, just over 98,000 public schools existed in the United States. This gives each individual school about a 0.00024% chance of falling victim to an attack. Point being, it is hard to convince elected officials to install true, expensive, and time consuming measures for an attack that has such a low chance of happening–especially when some of these measures may not make any difference. The six-year-old’s attack left many wondering what protocols were in place to prevent such a tragedy. The administration was alerted that the kid had a weapon, they searched him, and it still happened. The school claimed they did not have anything more they could’ve done to prevent the attack. Rightfully so, the officials had never dreamt a six-year-old student would bring a firearm and attack his teacher. There may always be a calamity waiting to happen in a country filled with guns and a culture obsessed with using them. And even more demoralizing, there do not seem to be any feasible solutions out there, only solutions to make people feel safer.