AFTER WINDER: Five Methods to Prevent Future School Shootings
Another school shooter injured and killed his teachers and classmates, this time in Winder, Georgia, and, based upon everything I’ve seen and read, I’m more convinced than ever that these shootings are easily preventable.
But before we can have real reform, the politicians, the law enforcement agencies, and the school administrators have to open their minds to the following:
Point #1: To Make Schools Safe, Every Public-School Student in America Must Walk Through a Metal Detector.
On Friday evening I watched accused shooter Colt Gray in a courtroom. The victims’ families sat in the back benches. The families and the other spectators had to walk through a metal detector to enter the building. Gray, when he entered Apalachee High School in Winder this week and murdered four people, had no such requirement.
I have to walk through a metal detector before one or more security guards will permit me to enter almost any government building, whether it’s at the city, county, state, or federal levels. This is really no different than going through security at an airport.
The only government buildings I’ve been in where I didn’t have to go through a metal detector were….you guessed it….public schools.
Yes, we will have to expend more taxpayer money. Also, yes, taxpayers have had to pay for a lot of boondoggles and lot of government pork barrel projects. In those instances, the costs outweighed the benefits. If we spend money for metal detectors for every public school in America then I argue that the benefits outweigh the costs.
Point #2: The People Who Run Public Schools Don’t Think Hard Enough About School Security.
When I was a newspaper reporter I often had the education beat. I would interact with a lot of teachers. Many of them were super-nice but seemed very childlike, very innocent, and even very sheltered.
School administrators, meanwhile, were neck deep in the politics of the job. They were always politically correct, always asking for more and more taxpayer money, and always using their political clout to keep negative stories about the school district out of the media.
These are the people who oversee security at your child’s school. They are not security-conscious people.
My father was a teacher for 35 years. Discipline problems were out of control where he taught, and when he tried to clamp down on it he couldn’t get any support from school administrators.
If the schools administrator (a) hired a no-nonsense security consultant to point out all of the building’s security vulnerabilities and (b) had enough power to get rid of the students who give off one warning sign after another that they’re disruptive and/or dangerous then a lot of these problems we’ve had the past 25 years would go away overnight.
Point #3: Public School Parents Don’t Ask the Right Questions (if they ask any questions, at all).
In Winder, Apalachee High School staff was warned about a potential shooting only hours before it happened. They did nothing.
This is where parents (of any junior high or high school student) should come in to review the security procedures at their child’s school.
They should ask the following:
• How many entrances and exits are at the school?
• Does the school have a metal detector at every entrance?
• Are all of the entrances and exits without a metal detector locked from the inside and outside?
• How well-trained is the school’s Student Resource Officer (SRO)?
• Are teachers allowed to carry firearms on campus and, if no, then why not?
• What are the school’s policies on students who make threats and exhibit disturbing behaviors and mental illnesses, etc.?
• What about government red tape and bleeding-heart school administrators? Do they protect dangerous or even potentially dangerous students from suspension or expulsion? And do they do so even when those students pose an obvious safety threat?
Point #4: Maybe Liberals Are Right When They Lecture Conservatives About Thoughts and Prayers.
In my personal life, I tell God that I will do all of the heavy lifting that I can to solve all of my problems…..and for the heavy lifting that I cannot do I trust Him to handle it.
My point: thoughts and prayers alone don’t solve problems.
Any time there’s a mass shooting the conservatives go on social media to offer thoughts and prayers. Atheists and leftists take to social media to mock “thoughts and prayers” and call for more gun control.
Instead of offering thoughts and prayers, conservatives instead need to do some heavy lifting of their own. They should define precisely how leftists and liberals have marginalized religion and polluted society with ideas and concepts so sick and twisted that they led to school shootings and other societal rot.
Other countries have fewer freedoms than the United States.
But with freedom comes responsibility.
Liberals have destabilized American society enough that they’ve made people more irresponsible. They insist that more government powers and fewer freedoms is the only remedy. Is this part of some organized plan of theirs’?
Point #5: Young People No Longer Know How to Cope with Life’s Many Difficulties.
Here’s what I wrote more than two years ago, immediately after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
“Time after time, we find out these school shooters — almost always young men — were bulled, had dysfunctional home lives, and had almost zero religious upbringing. No one taught them how to cope with life’s many difficulties. Due to a lack of religious instruction, life seems bleak, and these young men have no faith their lives can ever improve. Modern society has taught them to feel comfortable labeling themselves as victims. Modern technology and the most current social media platforms, especially Tik-Tok, instill a sense of narcissism among their young demographic. If you don’t believe me then visit Tik-Tok and learn for yourself. The young people there can’t see beyond themselves or their petty personal problems. Many of them crave fame and attention.”
Based upon media reports, that description fits Colt Gray perfectly. His mother was a drug addict. He was also a child of neglect.
A 25-year-old Beverly Hills man went to federal prison this year. His crime? A woman he briefly dated called things off with him. To cope, he tried to hire a hitman to kill her.
Teach your children, especially your boys, how to cope with all of life’s many problems.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Too many school administrators and politicians and media influencers won’t listen to me and would rather call for more gun control. But that’s not the answer.
If more Americans realize all of the things that I just wrote about and take them seriously and act upon them then I submit that the number of school shootings will go down dramatically.
Now, without any substantive changes, it’s just a matter of time before we have another Winder.
Special thanks to Warhammer’s Wife proofreading this story before publication to make certain there were no misspellings, grammatical errors or other embarrassing mistakes and/or typos. Follow Warhammer on Twitter @Real_Warhammer