2020: Zero School Shootings Since February. Problem Solved, Right?
Hardly.
On May 21st, in Glendale Arizona, a lone gunman entered an open-air mall in the Westgate district. He was carrying an AR15 style weapon and shot three people before surrendering. It happened just after stores started to open for the first time and people started to mass gather.
Armando Hernandez Jr., 20, told authorities that he had intended to shoot 10 people, in part to get back at society because he had been bullied all his life. This event paints an ominous picture of the violence that may accompany a return to mass gatherings.
As the title of this blog suggests, there have been no active shootings in schools since distance learning became the new norm, but the danger has not disappeared. On the contrary, a violent storm has been brewing and many experts believe that when schools and gatherings resume, there will be an uptick in violence.
There are many and varied reasons for this.
“There is reason to be concerned that this is kind of a perfect storm of people in crisis,”
said Jillian Peterson of Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., who was interviewed in a recent article in the Washington Post. She co-wrote “The Violence Project,” a study of commonalities among mass shooters.
The realities of the coronavirus pandemic could lead to a surge in indiscriminate public violence as the nation reopens and people begin to gather again.
The pressures on the public have been overwhelming and may push people to the brink. The widespread loss of life from Covid-19 has caused an incredible hardship on everyone. The subsequent economic collapse, unprecedented unemployment, loss of financial resources, and feelings of confusion and despair weigh heavily on fragile individuals.
Isolation and lack of access to mental health services can exacerbate conditions which may result in the kind of personal turmoil that would give rise to violent attacks.
“You’ve got a lot of alienated and frustrated individuals who have been cooped up at home and perhaps have been using this time to be online, getting radicalized,” said James Densley who co-authored the study.
Deborah Weisbrot, a pediatric psychiatrist at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital in New York interviewed dozens of students who made shooting threats. She was quoted in a recent article in the Washington Post: “We haven’t been massing, so there haven’t been mass shootings, and we haven’t had school, so for the first time in decades, there’s been no gun violence in schools.” She noted that doctors are seeing more “depression, suicidal ideation, and self mutilation. What is the impact on so many students who have had losses?” “And we are seeing kids who are not tolerating well the social situation” she added.
There has also been a surge in gun sales across the United States following the Covid-19 crisis and civil unrest across the country. The federal government processed 2.9 million background checks in April alone. It’s safe to assume that some of those guns are not going to be properly stored.
This, coupled with the desire (by some) to defund and displace School Resource Officers and Police at large creates a perfect storm for disaster. ‘
School Budgets have also been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. But, School Safety should never take a back seat to budgets and one company is helping schools to keep focused. Defcon Products, LLC. is the manufacturer of TeacherLock, a specialized device to help classroom teachers quickly lock down their rooms in an emergency. The team at TeacherLock has introduced a “School Safety Lease” program where schools can work to meet their safety needs while balancing their school budgets.
The fact that the Westgate Mall in Minnesota was only open for a few hours says a lot about how serious this problem is and how we fail to address it.