The shooting of 19 students and two teachers in Ulvade, Texas on May 24 has resulted in predictable calls for more gun control laws. Politicizing the tragedy, these proposals either tend to be vague, superficial and ineffectual, or would require the repeal of the Second Amendment along with similar constitutional provisions in many states. Perversely, gun control laws have empowered mass murderers by creating soft targets in the form of gun free zones.
Hardening these potential targets would go a long way to prevent more school shootings. The mass killing at Ulvade corroborates the need for enhanced school security. At Robb Elementary School, the murderer let himself in through an unlock side-entrance door. He remained in the school, unchallenged by local police, for 78 minutes before a member of a United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit entered the classroom and shot him.
Two days after Ulvade, the Michigan Legislature responded by passing a supplemental appropriation following recommendations from the bipartisan Michigan School Safety Task Force. The bill provides $27.5 million in additional school safety grants to fund security analyses of school buildings and develop critical incident mapping, creating detailed layouts of school buildings to help police respond to schools quickly and effectively during an emergency. This is on top of an increase in school safety grants from $10 million this year to $51 million for next year to provide funding toward the purchase of equipment or technology to improve the safety and security of school buildings.
Additional hardening of schools through the use of single points of entry, access controls within buildings, door locks, improved law enforcement response, armed school resource officers, and allowing teachers with advanced training to carry concealed would deny psychopaths easy opportunities to target schools. Until the United States can tackle its mental health crisis, enhanced security is our best opportunity to stem this modern wave of school shootings.
