Diligence increased after Columbine but school shootings continue to soar

Twenty-five years ago Saturday, two gunmen at Columbine High School shot and killed a dozen fellow students and a teacher and injured another 24 in an event that permanently altered Americans’ trust in schools as sacred and safe places.

At the time it was among the deadliest mass school shootings in U.S. history, and the deadliest at a high school, prompting attempts to understand why it occurred.

But, since then, the number of mass school shootings has soared despite the best efforts of school administrators, law enforcement safety experts and heightened security.

Columbine’s death toll has since been eclipsed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting in 2018, and the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting in 2022.

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security, a Naval postgraduate school, defines an active shooter incident as a situation where the perpetrator killed or wounded targeted or random victims within the school campus during a continuous episode of violence. Since 1999, there have been 118.

However, the K-12 School Shooting Database, listed on the center’s resources page, tracks incidents where a gun is pointed at someone with intent, is fired or bullets hit school property for any reason. Reasons include gang shooting, domestic violence, shootings at afterschool events, suicides and accidents. The database shows there have been 2,023 shooting incidents reported at K-12 schools in the U.S. since 1999. That total includes more than 300 in each of the previous two years — 308 in 2022 and 348 in 2023 — each set the record for the most reported in one year.

According to the database, 100 have been reported through the first quarter of 2024.

Internationally recognized expert Peter Langman, director of research and school safety training with Drift Net, a Chicago-based school safety and security organization, said despite the continued number of shooting incidents over the past 25 years, schools have made strides in combating in-school shootings.

“In the wake of Columbine what became standard practice was to do such things as lockdown drills,” Langman said. “How to survive an active shooter incident. Those are important and could save lives but none of those are focused on preventing the attacks. Those were reactive procedures. Not proactive.”

Milton Police Chief Curt Zettlemoyer reminisced about how schools used to feel like safe-havens.

“I can remember 20 years ago, school doors were open,” Milton Police Chief Curt Zettlemoyer said. “The biggest thing you trained kids in were fire drills and weather preparedness drills every few years. Now, kids are trained for active threats. That’s probably the biggest shift in school security. It’s just part of the security process now, which is kind of sad. But it’s the world we live in.”

Langman said a lot of emphasis is put on keeping people out of a building.

“There are door-locking systems, buzzing systems, surveillance cameras and so on,” he said. “Yet most shootings are done by people who belong in the building. Usually, they are current students, and occasionally former students. Usually, they are not outsiders.

“There have been a very small number of attacks at schools by people who have no business being there. That’s the extreme minority among cases that are extremely rare to begin with in the mass school shootings.”

The Milton Area School District is well aware that most offenders are current students, said Catherine A. Girton, administrator-director of student services, “and implements a layered approach to school safety that not only involves physical safety measures, but also emotional well-being.” Girton also serves as the school safety and security coordinator.

Over the last 15 years, there has been a significant push to promote threat assessment as a preventive measure

Threat assessment focuses on identifying warning signs of potential violence and investigating those warning signs to see if they are real threats or false alarms. And then put in whatever interventions or services are necessary to keep people from becoming violent.

Milton focuses resources on character development needed to be successful in the workforce, positive school culture, and screening of students who may need help dealing with their emotions, Girton said.

“We leverage our school counselors, psychologists, and social workers to provide support to students and parents/guardians through school-based services and/or to assist with referrals to community-based services,” she said.

School districts have to balance creating an open welcoming environment with providing a safe and secure campus, Girton said.

She said most post reports on school shooters reveal that the perpetrator shared information with others about his/her plan before the incident.

“It is vitally important for our students and employees to know that if they see or hear any concerning information, the information must be reported,” Girton said. “I am so proud of the relationships our principals, assistant principals, dean of students and school resource officers have with our school community which allows for this natural sharing of information.”

She said Milton’s students effectively use Safe 2 Say to communicate concerns with the administration and Milton police.

Any threat the district becomes aware of is taken seriously, Girton said.

“Notification to law enforcement is immediate,” she said. “Each building has a threat assessment team, led by the building principal, responsible for gathering information, assessing the situation, and managing the threat.

“The School Resource Officers are members of the Milton Area School District Threat Assessment Teams. The district’s collaborative relationship with Milton Borough Police, Union County Sheriff’s Department, and PSP is vital to resolving issues promptly and making necessary decisions about the operations of the district.”

Shooter profile misconceptionsMost of the school shooters in middle school or high school are not loners, Langman’s research indicates.

“I think our perceptions are skewed by a couple of high-profile cases, like Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook,” he said. “Both of those cases were adult shooters aged 23 and 20. And those were some very odd young men who did not have friends. But, that’s not the norm.”

Juvenile school shooters typically do have some friends, Langman said. They may not have the social success they want, but they are not the isolated loners that people tend to think they are. Sometimes, they are isolated, sometimes they have a group of friends, and sometimes they have significant others.

The two Columbine perpetrators had a pretty wide group of friends of both males and females. They were not alone. And they were not bullied, Langman said.

“It was high school and there was some teasing back and forth, but they gave worse than they got,” he said. “They threatened and intimidated other kids, made fun of them. They were on the receiving end of that too, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

RecommendationsLangman recommends all employees in school districts be educated on threats and active shooter situations.

“Pretty much everyone who works in a district ought to have a certain level of training about warning signs, reporting structure, and how this all can work together,” he said. “Usually, you would have a small group of people who would constitute the threat assessment team and would have significant training on warning signs and how to conduct the threat assessment, the dos, and don’ts, what are you allowed to do legally, and so on.”

Tip lines are a good idea as well, Langman said.

“Students do use them and report concerns. But for those to be maximally functional, we need people trained to recognize warning signs and know how and where to report them,” he said. “That can include school staff, and even the community because people may see or hear something and not recognize it as a potential warning sign. So there is more to be done by educating the public.”

Investigating a threat doesn’t have to mean calling the police, Langman said.

“This could be as simple as inviting a student in and saying, ‘Can you tell me about what happened? I heard a student say you said such and such,’” he said. “Depending on what you find out, you may want to do more, but it doesn’t have to be a disciplinary action and it doesn’t have to be a legal action.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.