My ideas to end school shootings, in no particular order because they’re all important:
- Metal detectors at the entrances of every school. In particular, metal detectors that sound the alarm school-wide –fire-alarm style– if someone tries to bring in contraband. (While we’re at it, let’s add them to malls, too.)
- Nationwide ad campaign to the effect of: Don’t be Nancy Lanza. If you have a mentally ill person in your household, get rid of your guns. Follow it up with the promise of being charged as an accomplice if someone uses your gun to threaten/kill someone else.
- Nationwide ban on assault weapons. Nobody needs them. If school-shooters had to take the time to reload, fewer people would die. Anyone who doesn’t agree is a potential murderer of children.
- [Plainclothes] police officer at every campus, from before school until the end of after-school programs. When I spoke with the principal at my first-grader’s school today, she said she would advise against having police on-campus because they don’t contribute to a sense of normalcy for children. Guess what? If a cop is on-site all the time, every day, that becomes normal. “To hire one police officer for every single public school in America it would cost the taxpayer $4.9 billion.” Otherwise known as .13% of our national budget: just over one-tenth of one percent. I know that’s how much *my* kids’ lives are worth, even on a bad day.
- Limit ammo purchases the same way we limit Sudafed sales, and institute a single nationwide database of ammunition purchases.
- Teach children to tell a grown-up if they hear anyone make threats to do harm to a school.
- Increase resources to diagnose mental illness in schools.