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What Really Keeps Schools Safe
MacIver Institute ^ | December 4, 2019 | Dan O'Donnel

Posted on 12/04/2019 7:39:58 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin

It was less a shock than it was an inevitability: Just a few hours after a 17-year-old student armed with a handgun forced a lockdown at Waukesha South High School on Monday, a report of a student with a gun at Waukesha North High School prompted a lockdown there. The following morning, a credible threat closed the Sparta School District while threats deemed to be non-credible were made against both Germantown and Grafton High Schools.

Just hours later, a 16-year-old Oshkosh West High School student stabbed a school resource officer and—in an incident nearly identical to that just a day earlier in Waukesha—the officer shot the student and police took him into custody.

As stunning as that initial incident at Waukesha South was, what has followed should not be at all surprising. While it is of this writing not yet known why the South student brought a gun to school, it seems clear that the so-called “copycat effect” inspired the threats against Sparta, Germantown, and Grafton and may have played a role in the incident at Oshkosh West.

Likely first coined in the early 1900s in response to murders similar to those committed by infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper, the phrase “copycat effect” has come to refer to the tendency of a highly publicized, sensationalized crimes to spawn similar misdeeds committed by those seeking similar attention.

Over the past twenty years, nowhere has this effect been more pronounced than in school shootings, and extensive research from the American Psychological Association, National Center for Health Research, the National Institutes of Health, and dozens of universities demonstrates that extensive publicity of mass shootings inspires would-be mass shooters.

In truth, it may well be the single most significant factor in the prevalence of mass shootings in America.

A specific form of the copycat effect known as the “Columbine effect” all but began the relatively recent phenomenon of mass shooting attacks on schools. Just eight days after two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves as law enforcement closed in at Columbine High School in April of 1999, the first documented copycat attack occurred in Taber, Canada, where a 14-year-old high school dropout obsessed with news coverage of the Columbine attack killed one student and injured another.

Since then, dozens of school shooters have explicitly mentioned the Columbine killers as the inspiration for their attacks while dozens more have taken inspiration from them.

In 2016, a 14-year-old eighth grader who killed his father and an elementary school student in South Carolina said that he “idolized” the Columbine shooters and aspired to outdo them.

“I think I’ll probably most likely kill around 50 or 60,” he posted to Instagram shortly before his attack. “If I get lucky maybe 150.”

While Columbine was his obsession, surpassing the most prolific school shooters in history was his mission.

“I HAVE TO BEAT [the Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman],” he wrote in another post. “At least 40.”

Fortunately, the gun he had stolen from and used to kill his father jammed before he could fulfill his ultimate goal, but he tragically killed a six-year-old at a local elementary school before responding police officers would arrest him.

Once they did, they found that he “detailed his motives in dozens of online messages, in his 46-page confession and in lengthy interviews with doctors who evaluated him, offering extraordinary insight into the mind of an American school shooter.”

In a chilling 2018 profile of the boy entitled “Inside an Accused School Shooter’s Mind,” The Washington Post outlined a crystal clear example of the Columbine effect that can also be used as a guidepost for public policy as it pertains to keeping schools safe from violent attacks.

“[The young gunman] debated whether he should attack his middle school, from which he’d been expelled, or his elementary school, just up the road,” the Post reported. He decided on Townville Elementary because it was closer and had no armed security.”

“It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel,” he wrote.

In an online chat, the boy “said he had researched police response times for the area and found that it would take them 15 minutes to get there, maybe 45 for SWAT. He said he would throw pipe bombs into each classroom before he got in a shootout with police and killed himself with his shotgun.”

The implication should be obvious—would-be school shooters tend to pick the softest possible targets. This serves to validate the decision of former Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature to dedicate $100 million to making Wisconsin’s schools as hard a target as possible.

Most legislative Democrats grudgingly signed onto the bill, but groused that Wisconsin was not doing enough to stop the real culprit: access to guns.

This, of course, misses the point. Monday’s incident at Waukesha South occurred a day after 600,000 people with high-powered firearms concluded Wisconsin’s nine-day gun deer hunt with a grand total of four accidental shootings (tying an all-time record for safety) and precisely zero gun crimes.

The only gun involved in Tuesday’s incident at Oshkosh West was the one the school’s resource officer used to stop the student who attacked him.

There is no evidence that any gun control law could have prevented Monday’s incident, just as there is no evidence that any law could have prevented a student from attacking a resource officer with a knife on Tuesday.

What stopped both incidents were the resource officers themselves.

Both the Waukesha School District (which says it received $1.2 million from the $100 million school security initiative) and the Oshkosh School District were not soft targets, and as such were equipped to thwart attacks against them.

The sheer randomness of school attacks—save for the predictable burst of copycats in the immediate aftermath of a well-publicized one—makes their complete prevention all but impossible.

However, recognizing that the copycat effect is always present and that the Columbine effect serves as a potent motivator for disaffected students are important first steps in further making Wisconsin’s schools more difficult targets to strike.

More laws aren’t needed; more forbearance is. Waukesha South helped prove it. At the educational level, administrators recognized a need for a resource officer and tighter security measures at the high school. At the law enforcement level, that officer worked quickly, calmly and effectively to stop the student in his tracks and keep him occupied until more officers could arrive. And at the individual level, the resource officer was made aware of the student’s gun because another student learned of it and told him.

Legislation didn’t enter into that equation at all; nor has it in the predictable slew of similar incidents since.

A student who will bring a gun to school or stab a resource officer or make terroristic threats cares little for the laws he’s violating. He cares only that his crime will be as easy as possible to commit.

Ensuring that it isn’t is the lesson for the rest of Wisconsin.


TOPICS: Education; Government; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: arth
Wisconsin had her turn in the barrel last week for multiple school shootings/stabbings. :(
1 posted on 12/04/2019 7:39:58 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
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To: All

NOTE: It’s NOT the guns!

“The implication should be obvious—would-be school shooters tend to pick the softest possible targets. This serves to validate the decision of former Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature to dedicate $100 million to making Wisconsin’s schools as hard a target as possible.

Most legislative Democrats grudgingly signed onto the bill, but groused that Wisconsin was not doing enough to stop the real culprit: access to guns.

This, of course, misses the point. Monday’s incident at Waukesha South occurred a day after 600,000 people with high-powered firearms concluded Wisconsin’s nine-day gun deer hunt with a grand total of four accidental shootings (tying an all-time record for safety) and precisely zero gun crimes.”


2 posted on 12/04/2019 7:41:44 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin (I don't have 'hobbies.' I'm developing a robust post-Apocalyptic skill set.)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

Good parenting would certainly prevent a lot of this.


3 posted on 12/04/2019 8:33:35 AM PST by bgill
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

“extensive publicity of mass shootings inspires would-be mass shooters”

Which is why the media is complicit in EVERY one of these mass shootings. They endlessly publicize the crimes and the shooters because they want to use the stories as an emotional wedge to push for gun control. They don’t care that they are inspiring the next shooter with their irresponsible coverage; in fact, they probably want that result, since it will give them another excuse to push for gun control when the next shooting happens.


4 posted on 12/04/2019 9:38:00 AM PST by Boogieman
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
Best would be to do like Stalin did, or even the Egyptian Pharaohs. All resources available should be put into play to erase all electronic and print traces of each and every school shooters name and history.

The shooters should only be referred to by the crime they committed with added disparaging adjectives. i.e. The socially inept Colombine shooter.

Erase all social media presence for the shooter and carry out a vilification campaign against school shooters to rival that of cigarettes and plastic straws.

Of course this will never happen because liberals needs these shooting in order to push their political agenda.

5 posted on 12/04/2019 10:18:15 AM PST by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

IMO, these kids doing such dastardly things-—against their own school mates-— has an even deeper source:

They think that BEING FAMOUS is everything...

They are hooked on social media & how many ‘followers’ a person has. They think being PAID to be a ‘Social Influencer’ is a real job. The companies that pay for such behavior should be prosecuted. Think about “OLIVIA JADE” who is the daughter of Lori Laughlin. Mom & Dad paid $500,000 to get both daughters into school & Olivia is on video saying “I don’t really care about school. I just care about the parties & stuff”. IF MY kid ever said that, I would not give her one red cent in allowance, and her computer privileges would be GONE.....Lori is facing as much as 40+ years in jail for her bribe. The kids won’t learn a damn thing.

These kids want to be famous-—
not talented-—
not properly prepared to be an employee in a good job-—
not smart enough to be self employed—
not prepared to marry & have a family & be responsible for such.

They are stuck on the idea that being famous-—no matter how heinous the reason-—is the be all and end all of a life.

Giving out ‘Participation trophies’ from age 2 forward certainly doesn’t help.

NOT keeping score isn’t helping.

When they do finally get a job-—that EMPLOYER will not be tolerant of goofing off & lack of ability. The rubber will meet the road in less than a week of ‘employment’. The employer WILL BE KEEPING SCORE!!!

Giving a cell phone to a 7 year old certainly doesn’t help.

Letting these kids play X-Box games all day & night & doing nothing else certainly doesn’t help.

Letting the kid have a computer in their room—out of sight of ANY parental supervision certainly isn’t helping.

Giving them a substantial allowance every week certainly can lead to their purchasing drugs & vaping. Where else are they getting the money for such supplies?

More supervision & more control is much more productive than seeing your kid in prison on every visiting day.

The permissiveness that the past 2 generations have used is reaping a reward they certainly didn’t think thru very far forward.

Dr. Phil could fill up a whole year with these kids & their ‘parents’.

I used to ride long distance endurance horse events for many years. One parent at the barn where I boarded my horses asked me to teach her son how to compete in endurance.

First, I had a ‘come to Jesus’ talk with her: IF she was going to have her heart in her throat every time we went out on a conditioning ride or at an actual event, I was out of the picture. I was NOT going to deliberately put her son in danger—especially since he was riding one of MY horses-—but I had to prepare him for every type of trail he might encounter when competing. Riding ONLY on the local bridle path wasn’t good preparation.

Then I told him: You will do EXACTLY what I tell you. IF I tell you to turn back-—or go left or right—or just FULL STOP, I do NOT want to hear “HUH”? “WHAT?” “WHY?”, etc. I may have seen a rattlesnake ahead. I may have seen a bicycle rider coming DOWNHILL against us on the fire road & I knew that rider didn’t see us. (that happened—both horses scrambled-—one uphill & one downhill to the edge of an embankment...he was on the lower horse).

I was very strict with this kid-—I didn’t want my horse injured or him to be hurt. So when he would jabber without paying attention, I would tell him AGAIN—we are going back to the barn if you are not concentrating. I have better things to do & I need to condition at a faster speed & further distance than WE can do anyway. You are too green.

Apparently I got across to him. The following year, he was the HIGH MILEAGE junior rider in the nation.

I still am in contact with him & he tells me often: When he is out riding with a lower caliber rider & gets into a tough spot & tries to explain to the other rider what needs to be done, he says “I can hear your voice in my head...What would you have told me to do?”

Was I really tough? I had to be! When he attained his NON-junior status, he would be riding without a supporting adult sponsor. I needed to train him to be safe. To pay attention to the trail marking—getting lost in wide open spaces isn’t smart.

Unfortunately, I succeeded at that..but—.the rest of his life is a total mess because his parents molly-coddled him in everything else. He is now in his mid-40’s & is basically not a good employee-—if he can even find a job without even a GED. I cut him NO SLACK when he calls. I cannot change his decisions, but I won’t tolerate his whining.


6 posted on 12/04/2019 10:31:40 AM PST by ridesthemiles
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Comment #7 Removed by Moderator

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