Sandy Hook tragedy - What to do next

The recent shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT has resulted the normal knee-jerk reaction from politicians.  There must be a need for more gun control.  This is the same old thing again.  Has it worked?

I know, I have heard the reports and comments.   States with stricter gun control laws tend to show that gun violence overall decreases.  And although this appears to support the reactions from the school shooting, it does not.  In fact, what we are talking about is trying to stop mass shootings.  If we are going to talk about reduction in crime, then let that lead the discussion.  But the Sandy Hook tragedy should lead to ways to stop other such shootings, not trying to project a political agenda.

The Columbine shooting, which happened in April 1999, led to discussions about gun control, and even a Michael Moore movie.  Did all this stop these shootings?

The Amish School shooting in Lancaster, PA in 2006 led to more gun control discussions.  Maybe this time these shooting will stop.

Not this time.  The Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and the Little Rock recruiting office shooting in 2009.  Still more talk about gun control.

This brings us to December 14, 2012 in Sandy Hook, CT.

All this time, and all this discussion about gun control, and will it prevent another mass shooting.  If history shows us anything is that it will not.

So what can we do to stop these shootings.  Obviously politicians, and the general public, want to do something.  Well, the reality is that we have already done something, just not enough.

After Columbine, as well as the other shootings, there were warning signs that the shooters were planning, and talking about, their deeds beforehand.  An eductional initiative went out to all students, teachers, parents and others to keep an eye out for people who are talking about killing or shooting people.  It is really unknown how many school shootings this prevented, but we do know that many people have been stopped.

There is a report from the coroner's office that the shooter in Newtown did not have any physical abnormalities of the brain (like the assassin who shot Reagan) but he was diagnosed with Asperger's disease.  Whether this played a part or not we hope we will find out.  Either way, the cause or the warning signs must be looked at in order to truly prevent these types of crisis in the future.

By the way, the worst mass school killing in the US occurred in Bath Township, Michigan in 1927 (when the Thompson machine gun was the favored weapon of the gangsters).  This killing had nothing to do with firearms though.  This killing was caused by a bomb.

The point is this.  Don't let politicians do the easy thing.  Don't let them automatically start touting some knee-jerk reactions that have little or no effect on school shootings.  So what can we do?

Well, we have already discussed the warning signs to keep an eye out for.  But what if someone still tries to commit another of these crimes?  Then what can be done.

The NRA takes a stand that we should arm at least some people in the schools.  The idea is that if someone starts shooting, that there would be at least some other way to try to stop the shooter other than throwing your unarmed body at him/them, with the hope that this person can disable the shooter before being fatally shot (a tactic that failed miserably at Sandy Hook Elementary School).

I can understand not wanting deadly weapons in the school, especially an elementary school.  But what seems to be absent from the discussion is the presence, of lack there of, non-deadly weapons.  The most notable one would be a taser.  If the principle at Sandy Hook had a taser, then she wouldn't have been killed and the shooter would have been stopped.

I live in New Fairfield, CT; about 25 miles from Sandy Hook.  I have two grandchildren and a niece in this school system.  There are currently discussions about security upgrades for our schools, including a new wall between the office and the rest of the school at Consolidated School (K-2), a rule that says that all doors, including classroom doors, are to remain locked, and additional training, along with the presence of a disaster protocol book within each classroom describing 22 different emergency scenarios, one of which is a school shooting situation.  While all these things sound good, will they really stop a determined shooter?

What happens if the shooter gets into the school anyway.  Consolidated, where my grandson attends kindergarten, has a series of glass doors and floor to ceiling windows near the multipurpose room, where the kids get off the school bus.  If a shooter wants to enter this school, all he has to do is shoot out those windows, like the shooter did in Newtown, and simply walk into the school.  In fact, with the wall between the office and the rest of the school, the safest place ends up being in the office.

If there were fingerprint accessible lock boxes, with a taser inside, located around the corner from every entry point of the school, with the only personnel allowed access are fully trained, then if a teacher or administrator wants to stop the killing, they don't have to throw themselves at the shooter, with likely tragic results.  Instead, they could shoot the gunman with the taser and no one, even the shooter, dies.

I have estimated that New Fairfield should have 15 taser/lock boxes in the High School, 7 or 8 in the Middle School, 5 or 6 at Meeting House Hill School and 4 or 5 at Consolidated School. These 30 or 35 taser/lock boxes could be maintained by the police department, who would also be in charge of background checks and training, and would probably come in less expensive than the changes the town is talking about.  And it would be much more effective at well.

There is no doubt that we need to do something to protect our children and grandchildren.  What we do can be the difference between life and death.  So don't let the politicians monopolize the discussion with new legislation that would have minimal impact on safety, if any.  We guard our workplaces many times better than we protect our children at school.  By putting non-lethal weapons in the hands of those who we expect to protect our kids, maybe together we can stop this madness and let our kids have their school back.