Creators: We Need to Squeeze Some Intelligence Into the Discussion About School Shootings

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
September 10, 2024

In the aftermath of another school shooting, this time in Georgia, parents will be clamoring to keep guns out of the hands of would-be mass killers, school boards will be looking for money to bring more armed security into school buildings, and politicians will be telling every interest group exactly what they want to hear.

Schools don't need more school resource officers, armed guards or, for that matter, armed teachers. Schools need to become adept at gathering information, sharing intelligence and, most importantly, making sense of what they learn.

The mother of the suspected Apalachee High School gunman told family members that she called the school on the morning of the shooting and warned a counselor about an "extreme emergency" involving her 14-year-old son, "according to text messages obtained by The Washington Post and an interview with a family member."

That account is supported by a call log from the family's shared phone plan, which shows a 10-minute call from the mother's phone to the school starting at 9:50 a.m. — about a half-hour before witnesses said the gunman opened fire.

In Uvalde, Texas, we learned far too well that good guys, many good guys, with guns can't always stop a bad guy with a gun. In Florida, Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison after killing 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The school's resource officer was criminally charged for failing to enter the school and confront Cruz. He was ultimately tried and acquitted.

Nearly every school in America has prepared for a shooting, more than 96% of public schools hold active-shooter drills, reports The Washington Post. Active shooter training, although needed, is a reaction to a shooting — not an effort to prevent one. According to the Post, "A pricey, multilayered security plan can be undone by something as small as an open door and a school police force can fail to prevent a worst-case scenario."

Target hardening and emergency response strategies are important components to minimize, or even deter, an attack. Intelligence is essential to preventing one.

School attacks are often the result of meticulous planning. With planning comes the potential for leaving clues. Jeff Kaas, author of "Columbine: A True Crime Story," wrote in the Post that 81% of school shooters tell someone about their plans. In addition, most attackers engaged in some behavior before the attack that caused others concern or indicated a need for help.

Suspicious conduct, indirect threats, even alarming expressions in school assignments need to be documented. Information must be shared so that a coherent snapshot can be created of a potentially volatile situation.

School districts need to collect, document and share intelligence. To that end, schools should establish fusion coordinators, "intel officers," who can synthesize documented activity occurring in school, outside of school and on social media networks. Teachers, administrators and staff should have regular roundtable discussions about unusual behavior, threats, bullying and social isolation of students.

Would a school district be better off with another armed resource officer or intelligence officer armed with a laptop, cellphone, intelligence software and an email serving as a central point of contact trying to make sense of information from teachers, staff, students and outside public sources?

Intelligence has been cultivated and used effectively in this country's antiterrorism efforts. An intelligence model might not only help prevent a violent rampage but may assist school districts to more effectively reach out to students who need support, counseling or more specific interventions.

One thing is for certain: What America is doing to address mass school shootings is not working. The time is right to look at other options, and just maybe the next officer a school district should hire is an intelligence officer, not a police officer.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.

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State response to mass shootings: 25 states require no permit to carry a handgun—nine more than in 2020

After a mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas last year prompted calls for new gun restrictions, Republican-led states around the country moved in the other direction, reported The New York Times. One of them was Tennessee, where the governor insisted that tighter firearms laws would never deter wrongdoers.

“We can’t control what they do,” Gov. Bill Lee said.

Tennessee lawmakers have instead moved to make firearms even more accessible, proposing bills this year to arm more teachers and allow college students to carry weapons on campus, among other measures.

Then came the attack on Monday at the Covenant School in Nashville, where a shooter carrying multiple weapons killed six people, including three children. The same day, a federal judge signed off on a state settlement allowing people as young as 18 to carry a handgun without a permit.

Amid the ghastly cadence of multiple mass shootings that have prompted calls for more comprehensive controls on guns, Republicans in statehouses have been steadily expanding access to guns.

this year to limit gun-free zones, remove background checks and roll back red-flag laws that seek to remove firearms from those who are a danger to themselves or others.

Missouri last year enacted a measure that made it illegal for local law enforcement to cooperate with federal authorities in many gun investigations. A federal judge earlier this month struck down the law as unconstitutional.

“I think it’s gotten progressively worse over the years,” North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, said in an interview. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled Legislature in his state overrode his veto and eliminated a century-old pistol permitting system.

In 25 states, no permits are required to carry a handgun — nine more than in 2020. 

“That has been the most rapid expansion of gun rights at the state level that we have seen,” said Jacob Charles, an associate professor who specializes in firearms law at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.

Perhaps nowhere represents the shift to expand gun access more than Tennessee, a state at the crossroads of Appalachia, the upper South and lower Midwest whose politics on guns typify Red America’s rapid movement rightward on gun regulations.

In recent years, Republicans in the Tennessee State Legislature — a 20-minute drive from the site of this week’s mass shooting — have passed a series of measures that have weakened regulations, eliminating some permit requirements and allowing most residents to carry loaded guns in public, open or concealed, without a permit, training or special background checks.

The decisions came even after a representative of the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association rose at a legislative hearing to oppose the permitting measure, saying it would make knowing whether a person was unlawfully carrying a weapon more difficult for law enforcement.

Jerry Sexton, then a Republican state representative, accused him of wanting “to infringe upon the rights of us as a people.”

“I am offended by the fact that you are doing this,” Mr. Sexton said. “I say that you need to back off and let citizens be citizens.”

A congressman in Georgia ran for the office in 2020 with yard signs featuring an AR-15 rifle. Former President Donald J. Trump made a point of appearing in person at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston in May, not long after the school shooting in Uvalde. Other candidates have repeatedly been using guns in television ads.

Representative Andy Ogles, a Republican whose district includes the Covenant School where this week’s mass shooting took place, posted a Christmas photo of his family posing with rifles in 2021. The photo drew criticism this week in the aftermath of the killings.

“Why would I regret a photograph with my family exercising my rights to bear arms?” he said.

The National Rifle Association remains a potent force on the right despite a recent drop in fund-raising, amid questions about the lavish spending habits of its senior leadership in the Beltway. And the gun rights movement itself has become both more diffuse and influential, with local groups — including the Gun Owners of America and the conservative Dorr brothers network in the Midwest — gaining a following, and pressuring Republican state lawmakers from the right.

In the Nashville killing, the parents of the shooter — identified by police as Audrey E. Hale — had reported that their child was under doctors’ care and “should not own weapons,” said Chief John Drake of the Nashville Metro Police Department. The shooter had purchased seven firearms from five local gun stores and then used three of them during the attack.

The Republican initiatives have not been limited to statehouses. In Congress, the same day as the Tennessee shooting, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, postponed a hearing where he planned to make the case for a Republican bill to outlaw one of the modest regulatory efforts undertaken by the Biden administration, a requirement to register so-called stabilizing braces that allow semiautomatic pistols to be propped against the shoulder for easier, more focused firing.

Images of the weapons used in the Nashville shooting appeared to show that the killer owned such a brace and might have used it in the attack, according to law enforcement officials. It would not have been illegal to possess one — owners of the braces have until the end of May to register their weapons and pay a $200 fee to comply with the change.

“Democrats were going to turn this tragic event into a political thing,” Mr. Jordan told reporters at the Capitol on Monday night. He said he had no plans to withdraw the measure or to slow his push to loosen gun laws.

One of Tennessee’s senators, Marsha Blackburn, made no mention of gun control ideas but called on Congress to find ways to increase security in schools.

Gov. Lee vowed to “act to prevent this from happening again” in Tennessee, but did not offer any specifics on how he planned to do so. A key committee in the state General Assembly decided to postpone the consideration of any bills relating to guns until next week, with State Senator Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican, saying, “We need to be respectful of those victims and the families of the victims.”

Researchers examining the impact of mass shootings on gun policy found a few years ago that states with Republican-controlled legislatures were more likely to loosen gun laws in the year after a mass shooting in their state than in other years.

States led by Democrats have long been pursuing more stringent gun control measures.

In Connecticut after the school shooting in Newtown in 2012, state lawmakers expanded an assault weapons ban, banned high-capacity magazines and implemented universal background checks. Oregon voters last year approved a sweeping gun control measure, which requires gun purchasers to get a permit and take a gun safety course, that is currently being challenged in court.

Other measures under consideration this year include efforts in Minnesota to make it easier to take guns from people deemed to be a threat, a plan in Oregon to ban untraceable guns that are assembled at home and a bill in Michigan to penalize those who leave guns in places accessible to children.

State Representative Bo Mitchell, a Democrat from Nashville, has been outspoken about his opposition to various bills currently under review in the Tennessee Legislature that would expand access to firearms, hoping instead that lawmakers might respond to the recent mass shootings with measures such as expanded background checks and a ban on assault rifles. The state, he noted, has dealt with a series of mass shootings and soaring gun deaths among youths.

 “If guns made us safer, Tennessee should be one of the safest states in the country,” he said. “Instead, we have one of the worst gun violence problems in America.”

Hundreds of people gathered in Public Square Park in downtown Nashville on Wednesday for a vigil honoring those killed during this week’s shooting, cupping their hands around flickering white candles or shielding their eyes from the bright sun.

They embraced one another and wiped away tears, some singing along as the musician Ketch Secor performed “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

The seven children of Mike Hill, a beloved custodian killed in the shooting, joined Jill Biden, the first lady, Mayor John Cooper, local leaders and law enforcement officials.

On the steps of the courthouse and at City Hall, they left flowers.

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School shootings reach record level nationwide

As criminologists have built a comprehensive database to log all school shootings in the U.S., we know that deadly school gun violence in America in now a regular occurrence – with incidents only becoming more frequent and deadlier.

Records compiled by The Conversation show that seven more people died in mass shootings at U.S. schools between 2018 and 2022 – a total of 52 – than in the previous 18 years combined since the watershed 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Since the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, moreover, more than 700 people have been shot at U.S. schools on football fields and in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias and parking lots.

Many of these shootings were not the mass killing events that schools typically drill for. Rather, they were an extension of rising everyday gun violence.

There have been shootings at U.S. schools almost every year since 1966, but in 2021 there were a record 250 shooting incidents – including any occurrence of a firearm being discharged, be it related to suicides, accidental shootings, gang-related violence or incidents at after-hours school events.

That’s double the annual number of shooting incidents recorded in the previous three years – in both 2018 and 2019, 119 shootings were logged, and there were 114 incidents in 2020.

With more than two months left, 2022 is already the worst year on record. As of Oct. 24, there have been 257 shootings on school campuses – passing the 250 total for all of 2021.

Many of these incidents have been simple disputes turned deadly because teenagers came to school angry and armed.

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Gun manufactures told Congress they 'bore no blame' in recent massacres

Concerns over the firearm industry’s marketing practices and accountability grew last week, prompting more proposed legislation, a day after chief executives of two leading gun manufacturers told Congress they bore no blame in the recent mass shootings, reported NBC News.

House lawmakers introduced a measure that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the gun industry’s advertising and marketing practices. It is the latest attempt by federal legislators to hold gun companies responsible after the massacres in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.

But like other proposals making their way through Congress — including a ban on so-called assault weapons and a repeal of federal protections that largely shield the gun industry from lawsuits — it faces staunch Republican opposition that will likely keep it from advancing in the Senate.

Now, gun safety advocates urge lawmakers to ramp up efforts after gun-makers doubled down on their lack of culpability while testifying before the

"I am now convinced that if something is not done to rein in the bad actors in the firearms industry, with regards to marketing, I’m fearful those bad actors will end up setting the course for the entire industry," said Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive and author of the book “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America.”

Busse, 52, who testified in person at the last week's hearing, looked on as the chief executives of Daniel Defense and Sturm, Ruger & Co. told Congress that mass shootings are “local problems” that cannot be blamed on “inanimate” firearms.

Daniel Defense made the rifle the Uvalde gunman used to kill 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School on May 24. The company mostly sells semi-automatic rifles, which make up about 80% of its sales, CEO Marty Daniel said.

While he condemned the attack, Daniel said “murderers are responsible” for mass shootings, rather than the guns or the gun manufacturers.

Similarly, Christopher Killoy, CEO of Sturm, Ruger & Co., said the “firearm is an inanimate object," and that he does not consider his company’s “modern sporting rifles” to be “weapons of war.”

At the hearing, several committee members honed in on the "disturbing" sales tactics that they say fueled the gun industry's staggering profits in the last few years. Those tactics, the committee said, include marketing weapons to white supremacists and young men to prove their manliness.

Busse, who was vice president of sales for gun manufacturer Kimber before he left in 2020, said the gun industry’s “egregiously irresponsible marketing” will accelerate if Congress does not pass measures.

"There is much more of this on the way," said Busse, now a senior adviser for the gun violence prevention group Giffords. "No one from the industry is going to stop it, and it’s going to get much worse."

Some Democratic lawmakers in the House are hoping to prevent that, but they face an uphill battle.

Thursday's measure would direct the FTC to create and enforce rules that would curb deceptive firearms marketing practices, as well as investigate gun ads that appear to target minors, imply or encourage illegal firearm use, or relate to the sale of semi-automatic weapons.

It would also require gun companies to pay up to about $46,500 in penalties for each violation.

New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski, who introduced the bill, said it would make clear that "there are consequences for deceptively hawking weapons of war to impressionable consumers."

Congress is expected to soon vote on banning so-called assault weapons for the first time since 1994. And last week, the House Judiciary Committee voted to advance a measure that would repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, clearing the way for a vote on the House floor.

Since 2005, the federal law has given sweeping immunities to firearms and ammunition manufacturers and sellers from liability when their products are used in crimes.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has tried to repeal the law more than four times since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Until now, each attempt has failed to advance out of committees and subcommittees.

In a news release, Schiff celebrated that progress as one of the most significant congressional acts in a decade.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said the movement was a "really hopeful sign” but conceded that at least this year, that is likely the farthest the bill will go.

“I don’t see any possible way forward in this particular Senate," he said, adding that the proposed measures, particularly the repeal, would lead to significant and sorely needed structural changes.

"Every time that there’s a major shooting, gun sales go way up," Beyer said. "This is unfettered capitalism at its worst." 

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