CAL THOMAS

As President Trump prepares to head to Alaska to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to “stop the killing” in Russia and Ukraine, what is being done to stop school shootings in America as millions of children begin returning to their schools this week?

In my school days we had two drills — fire drills and hiding under desks in case of nuclear war. Now there are drills about what children should do if an active shooter is in their school.

According to the American College of Surgeons, there have been more than 2,000 school shootings in the U.S. since 1970, including K-12 grades and college campuses. The number of school shootings has more than doubled in the past decade, with 2022 being one of the deadliest years on record.

Some other facts: The victims have been predominantly children and the perpetrators mostly white. Handguns have been the preferred weapon. The incidents have not been limited to a particular region but evenly distributed across the country.

U.S. Secret Service analysis of nearly 40 years of school violence found that roughly three-quarters of school shooters’ guns came from the home of a parent or close relative. An estimated 4.6 million American children live in households with at least one loaded and unlocked firearm, according to a report published in 2022 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Schools have implemented new strategies to thwart people with guns gaining entry into school buildings and classrooms, but given how some have eluded those strategies it appears to be less than 100% effective.

Preventive measures include identification badges that allow entry into the school building, assessment teams to measure the safety level of individual schools and mental health support for students and staff. On that last point, how many times have we heard from students who tell us after a shooting they suspected something was wrong with their classmate, or they heard him making threats. Students need to be encouraged to say something to teachers or administrators if they see or hear something. More emphasis on bullying would also help. Perhaps a team of students could be trained to reach out and befriend kids who feel isolated and bullied.

If parents have a child who is depressed, angry or who spends too much time obsessing about firearms, they can do more to head off violence and stop being in denial. An intervention might be held with them, police and mental health experts.

It is a stain on America that police cars are parked outside of schools today and armed guards are outside and inside many churches. Back to school used to be fun for most of us. Catching up on what our friends did during the summer, seeing a favorite teacher, playing on sports teams if we were athletically gifted were just some of the reasons that the end of summer was not so bad. We took for granted a safe and learning environment.

Now, just as with police officers who go off to work each day with a spouse and kids secretly wondering if they will come home at night, parents must be thinking the same. This should no longer be allowed to happen to America’s children. That it does says there is something seriously wrong in our country and everything possible must be done to put an end to school shootings.

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Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.