It’s been eight years since the horrible shooting at Majorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, galvanized the nation’s attention on school shootings.
Make no mistake: I’m not suggesting that this school shooting was not especially heinous. All school shootings are awful, but this one took the horror up several notches.
17 people killed. 17 more injured. All of it could have been prevented (you can find out more about why I say that here).
And activists, understandably want to do something to prevent this type of thing from happening again.
I’m with them on that. I want to prevent this kind of thing from ever occurring at any time in the future.
The difference between me and them, though, lies in how we propose to fix the problem. For example, Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Tony Montalto, president of Stand with Parkland, write,
But recent school shootings remind us that progress [in passing national legislation for the purpose of preventing school shootings] does not equal completion. Congress still has unfinished work.
These activists, maybe because two of them are members of the House of Representatives, are fixated on Congress passing laws for the purpose of preventing school shootings.
If I honestly thought that laws would stop criminals from doing evil things, then I might be tempted to jump on this bandwagon.
The thing is, laws don’t stop crime. Laws may provide for punishment after the fact, but when a criminal intends to die during the crime (which so often happens during mass shootings like school shootings), what “preventative” measure based on a threat of punishment can a law implement to discourage mass shootings?
Answer: None.
When the mass shooter intends to either be killed by police or intends to take their own life during the shooting spree, threats of prison don’t matter.
So what is the answer?
There is one big answer that we should be implementing now, and two other answers that we should look at.
The first answer is to do away with gun-free zones.
Mass shooters often say that they choose to shoot people in gun-free zones so that they can maximize the kill count. Do away with gun-free zones (or, at the very least, take that designation away from schools), and schools stop being a target.
That’s not my speculation. That’s is an obvious conclusion based upon active shooter manifestos over the years.
The second answer is to allow teachers who want to be armed at school to train and carry at school to be able to shoot back. Mass shooters don’t want that either.
The third answer? Harden the schools. Lock doors. Control access to the school. Maybe bulletproof glass. Make it harder for would-be shooters to be able to get to the kids to do them harm.
And here’s the thing: You don’t need Congress to do any of these things. These can all be done on the local or state level.
In the case of hardening the schools, this almost has to be done on the local level.
So, my question is: They’ve had eight years to make these three things happen locally or on the state level, so why haven’t they?