Guns Go to School

More than 95% of our children go to school each day without a gun or any other sort of weapon, and most of them do so because their schools are safe, nonthreatening places. Some children do bring weapons to school, mostly claiming they do so for protection. What weapons? Their variety is remarkable:

Guns have clearly caused the most concern: to the government, now seeking to declare legal gun-free zones around schools; to parents, fearing a goodbye on a school morning may be a goodbye forever; to school authorities, scrambling to find even more effective ways of keeping guns off the premises; and to students, the potential victims, fearful of being attacked.

What are the facts surrounding gun use in school? About two-thirds of the youths bringing guns to school got their arms from a friend or family member. Though in general there is more school violence in junior rather than senior high school (seventh grade is the most aggressive grade), approximately two-thirds of the gun-use incidents in American schools take place in senior high schools. Although some guns are fired by accident in schools (13% of all incidents), 65% of shootings are intentional. Why does one student intentionally shoot another? The times and locations in which these shootings occur provide ample clues to these students' motivations.

Although students spend at least 90% of each school day in classrooms, three-quarters of the shootings in recent years took place elsewhere:

While 22% of the shootings took place during classes, 32% occurred in the four-minute transition period between classes. Most classes are times of attention to lessons, restricted movement, and high levels of teacher supervision. Between classes, transitions are, for too many students keenly oversensitive to imagined insults, times of attention to “bad looks,” “stare-downs,” or “intentional” bumps from students passing the other way. These incidents happen in a context of lowered teacher supervision to youngsters set to respond not with counter-insults or even their fists, but instead, with the metal equalizer weapon in their pockets or book bags.

In addition to such real or imagined insults, students have shot other students in schools over:

What are schools doing in response? Increasingly, expulsion is their answer, or at least suspension for long periods, perhaps with reassignment to special, alternative schools.

Many things also are being done to schools themselves in an effort to make them gun free. Metal detectors are the most frequent change thus far. That they are of value is clear; that not a small number of weapons (including guns) still enter the building is also clear, as is the fact that such devices can indeed change the climate of a school, making it more prison-like.

Also being used with increasing frequency are:

Our schools most definitely are not becoming armed camps. Yet the era of the school as neutral territory, a uniformly safe place for learning with no threat to its students beyond an occasional fistfight or wrestling match, is over. Bringing weapons including guns to school is still a rare event for the vast majority of students. Nonetheless, it does happen, and is happening with increasing frequency. Government, school authorities, parents, and students are wise to be concerned, and to continue to respond prudently.

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