Protecting Kids from Guns
Across the country, innovative steps to end schoolyard killings As the last bullet ricocheted through the latest
schoolyard this spring, parents and teachers across the country were feeling
helpless against the onslaught of violence that suddenly swept through
suburban education. How can you protect innocent children at a time when
American households still have more guns than computers and the average child
has seen more than 100,000 acts of violence on television by age 12?
Yet, as summer comes, authorities are pointing to a growing number of
experimental solutions that are showing promise and could be adopted by other
communities before schools reopen this fall. No one claims they will be
perfect, but they would surely reduce the carnage of this past year when 70
people were gunned down–22 of them killed–by young teenagers in a spate of
copycat killings.
Ronald Stephens of the National School Safety Center, associated with
Pepperdine University in California, points to a high school in the nearby San
Fernando Valley as a model of creativity. There, a dynamic principal (and
former reserve deputy sheriff), Robert Kladifko, has introduced a program
called WARN–Weapons Are Removed Now–to break the code of silence that
teenagers adopt when they hear friends threatening violence. Students from
Reseda High run the program, visiting local elementary and middle schools to
teach the importance of keeping weapons out and the moral correctness of
reporting on those who bring them in.
Crackling excitement. A second initiative at Reseda High is called
the Principal’s Inner-Ear Council, a group of 30 or so students including
known gang members and popular kids commanding respect; they have a direct
line to the principal and help him keep order. Kladifko fairly crackles with
excitement as he recalls a student recently bringing a butcher knife to
school and a council member putting a stop to trouble. The key, he says, is to
give students a sense of ownership in their own school.
Elsewhere, some 34 states, led by Florida, North Carolina, Texas,Colorado, and
Arizona, are experimenting with the appointment of “school resource officers.”
The SRO is a law enforcement officer trained to spot and counsel troubled
teenagers, educate others on violence, and arrest those who commit crimes. In
the past two years, reported firearm possession has dropped 50 percent in
North Carolina schools, and principals identified SROs as the single most
important factor in deterring crime.
Texas is also trying out a law that requires local law enforcement officers to
notify school administrators within 24 hours of arresting a student.Previous
laws governing juveniles kept these matters secret so that administrators
often missed warning signs from high-risk kids.
Programs like these should not relieve parents of assuming primary
responsibility for the behavior of their children. The percentage of
households with guns is actually down these days, but in homes that do have
guns, owners are building small arsenals–an average of five weapons under
each roof. No wonder that the schoolyard killers this school year found it so
easy to get their weapons. Parents who negligently permit a teenager to leave
home with a gun should be just as legally liable for the consequences as
parents who allow teenagers to drink at their home and then kill on the
highways. Nor should preventive programs remove the onus from the entertainment
industry. Despite repeated promises to the contrary, leaders in that
industry continue to pour out films and videos hooking people on the notion
that violence is just a part of life. They should spend a little time in
Jonesboro and Springfield.
Defenders of the status quo dismiss all these concerns,
arguing–correctly–that the overall crime rate is coming down. What they fail
to point out is that the rate of firearm deaths among children under 15 years
of age, incredibly, is still 12 times higher in the United States than in 25
other industrialized nations combined. This school year brought a flood of
copycat killings; now is the time to begin a new season of copycat solutions.
– David Gergen US News and World Report