New Report: School Shootings Are Preventable

One upside of the COVID-19 pandemic has been little to no school violence. Unfortunately, the return of students to school and compounding mental health problems of students means this will likely change. Of course, this is everyone’s worst-case scenario. You’ve just spent a year (or more) homeschooling and now the return to class means that school may be more turbulent than ever.

To help us prevent school violence, the Secret Service just released a new report, "Averting Targeted School Violence," which can hopefully shed light on this situation.

Let’s look at what the report says:

• School shootings are largely preventable. Many who plot violence write about it in their journals, tell their friends, and conduct extensive online research. Intervention must come from someone close to the student who is planning violence, such as the grandmother who reported her grandson after reading his diary/plans of mass casualties in Washington State (NBC News, 2021).
• School shooters share common “warning signs.” Often they have a history of needing school discipline, have had interaction with the law (in relation to drugs, theft, or violence), have experienced bullying, and/or have a history with mental/emotional problems (depression, suicide attempts/ideation, addiction, trauma/abuse).
• Students plotting violence often have access to guns (or other weapons) at home, and/or interest in extremism (racist ideology and fascination with people like Adolf Hitler, for example) or violence (the Columbine shootings, as an example). They may even become obsessed with certain dates, such as that of a previous shooting or other dates that are meaningful in their mind.

Prioritizing Prevention

Between 2006 and 2018 the Secret Service averted over 67 plots of violence against schools, which is part of their analysis. What they discovered was there were many intervention points throughout – either from observant community members, other students, family members, teachers, or administrators who noticed when something wasn’t “quite right” with a student and reported someone they considered potentially dangerous.

From my perspective, creating a culture – at home, school, and in the community, that praises reporting on potentially suspicious or harmful behavior is vital. Reporting might make you uncomfortable and takes a lot of courage, but it is the right thing to do. Helping students muster the courage to tell someone about a potentially dangerous student is essential to keeping our schools safe – even if it’s an anonymous reporting system. While this report says students are best positioned to see problematic peer behavior, the truth is it’s up to each of us when we see something – we must say something.