No matter where one stands on the gun issue, one fact will always remain true. Those who intend to commit a crime will find a way to obtain a gun. They can always find a source, albeit illegal, that will provide them with weapons for the right amount of money. It’s true in this country and it’s true in every other country in the world.

School administrators need to take a look at inner-city schools and learn a lesson from them. They have analyzed their threat, i.e. drug dealers and gang members, and have allocated funds to provide resource personnel in order to protect their students while they are on school premises. The students of inner-city schools still have safety issues, but their issues lie with getting to and from school safely.

Students in suburban school districts can get to and from school safely. Their parents may drive them or they may drive themselves to school. The threat to their safety lies within the student body itself. Any one of the students in their school could, at any point in time, decide to commit a horrific crime. School districts need to allocate funds for adequate resource personnel in order to protect their students. Money cannot be the issue, as the life of just one of their students has to be worth more than any dollar amount.

School districts also need the media’s help in order to prevent these kinds of crimes. A psychologist needs to explain to the media that they are giving the perpetrators of these crimes exactly what they are looking for, notoriety. For a few brief days, the perpetrator gets to be the center of attention from the media. They will analyze his social posting and make him, in some sick way, famous. These individuals preplan their crimes and know what will happen to them. They want to have the highest body count possible in order to make the media focus on them for as long as possible.

There are lots of reasons we have gun violence in our schools: mental health issues, bullying, gratuitous violence in movies and games, and the breakdown of the family. We cannot solve all of these issues at once, but we can at least allocate the funds in order to protect our children, our most valuable resource, from the negative consequences of them. We can also refuse to name the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes , and not give them the notoriety they are seeking.

Note: These ideas are not original to me. They have been suggested by various people in their quest to prevent school violence. This post was written after a discussion with my son, Shawn who is on the Safety Team. His team manages threat assessment and protection of large groups of people. These are just two areas that could be worked on in an attempt to protect our children. There are many more. We must take seriously the threat to our children and start somewhere.