How the Lessons of Columbine Saved Lives At Arapahoe High School

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Ray Sanchez reports at CNN that the handling of Friday's shooting at Arapahoe High School, just 10 miles from the scene of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, drew important lessons from the earlier bloodshed. At Arapahoe High School, where senior Claire Davis, 17, was critically injured before the shooter turned the gun on himself, law enforcement officers responded within minutes and immediately entered the school to confront the gunman rather than surrounding the building. As the sound of shots reverberated through the corridors, teachers immediately followed procedures put in place after Columbine, locking the doors and moving students to the rear of classrooms. "That's straight out of Columbine," says Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services. "The goal is to proceed and neutralize the shooter. Columbine really revolutionized the way law enforcement responds to active shooters." Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson credits the quick police response time for the fact that student Karl Pierson, the gunman, stopped firing on others and turned his weapon on himself less than 1 minute, 20 seconds after entering the school. Authorities knew from research and contact with forensic psychologists that school shooters typically continue firing until confronted by law enforcement. "It's very unfortunate that we have to say that there's a textbook response on the way to respond to these," says Trump, "because that textbook was written based on all of the incidents that we've had and the lessons learned (PDF).""

Comments

Rule #1

[BasilBrush]

The first rule should be to not give easy access to firearms to the general public in the first place.

Re:Rule #1

[Sigma 7]

People going on a shooting spree are as much a victim of society as the people they kill

Except for the fact that some of those shooters are simple psychopaths.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - pretended to show promise after they attended the anger management classes, even writing a letter of apology to the van owner. At the same time, they wrote in their journal about their god-given right to break into a van in the middle of nowhere. Other bits of motive exist, with them generally claiming things persistent with narcissism.

Granted, most of the problems could be avoided by people paying attention. Obviously, the person providing the firearms should have known that something was wrong with purchasing a semi-auto pistol and a shotgun for two minors who had a questionable history.

Re:Rule #1

[BasilBrush]

The huge numbers of countries that have strong gun control are not suffering with school massacres being committed with bombs instead.

Where do you get a lot of people setting off home made bombs? Places where there are also a lot of guns. Iraq in the last decade. Northern Ireland in the 70s/80s. etc.

Bombs are not gun alternatives. Cutting guns does not increase bomb attacks.

Re: Rule #1

[glueball]

Governments killed 20X the number of civilians as civilians killed civilians in the 20th century worldwide.

I think I know who to be concerned of thank you very much.

Re:Rule #1

[rubycodez]

Mexico has much stricter laws than Germany, what a gun-violence-free paradise that is eh?

and before someone repeats lie of certain BATF official, most guns in Mexico in fact don't originate in the USA.

Re:Rule #1

[Runaway1956]

"People going on a shooting spree are as much a victim of society as the people they kill."

With that statement, you simply assume that all people are good, and that no people are evil. And, that idea is so terribly naive, so stupid, that we shouldn't have to discuss it.

The FACT IS, evil little children grow into evil teens, who grow into evil young adults, who then mature into evil adults, and eventually evil old bastards.

You may pretend that no child is evil. You and society in general may pretend that all children are equal in all respects.

I'll go with Darwin, and survival of the fittest. Some kids are simply unfit to fit into society in any way, shape, or form.

And, I suspect that every member of Slashdot who happens to be a mother, or hopes to be a mother, will hate me forever now.

Re:Rule #1

[DexterIsADog]

Well, that depends on how you look at it. You're restricting people's freedoms to stop a few people who abuse a tool, and barring extraordinarily catastrophic situations, I just can't get behind that.

So, around 10,000 homicides by gun EVERY YEAR, plus around 20,000 suicides by gun EVERY YEAR. Just under 3,000 deaths on 9/11 justified gutting the bill of rights, invading a country or two, but you don't think the 130,000 homicides by gun SINCE 9/11 is an "extraordinarily catastrophic situation"? How in the world do Americans become accustomed to such carnage? I guess it's true; we suck at putting things in perspective.

Re:Rule #1

[Lisias]

I'm from Germany, were gun laws are much, MUCH stricter and therefore we aren't seeing such tragedies on a yearly basis like it's come to be anticipated in the US.

In Swiss, every single person that once belonged to the army are not just allowed, but expected to have personal arms in home.

The guns aren't the problem. People are.

Guns are almost banned in Brazil, for example, and we have simply the worst ratio of firearm killed people in the world.

Banning firearms does no good. What EUA (and, yet more urgently, Brazil) should start to do is banning bad firearms owners.

Re:Rule #1

[Dereck1701]

10,000 firearm related homicides, and a total yearly mortality rate of over 2 MILLION! Thats less than 0.5% of all annual deaths in the US. Most of those are probably due to gang warfare, which isn't going to stop even if you could magically remove all civilian firearms in the US. Speaking more directly to firearms. Most estimates say that there are at least 270 Million civilian firearms in the US, that means that only 0.0037% of firearms are misused each year. You want to penalize probably in the neighborhood of 100 Million people for the actions of less than 10,000. If you're really looking to save lives we need to fix hospitals, medical malpractice is estimated to kill almost 200,000 a year.

Re:Rule #1

[shutdown -p now]

Legally carried handguns are very, very rarely used in crimes.

Re: Rule #1

[DutchUncle]

In 2012 in New York City there was an incident near the Empire State Building. One person killed another, premeditated, a dismissed employee taking revenge on the person he thought responsible. A crime, but comprehensible. Two police officers confronted the shooter, he pulled his gun, and they fired numerous times - hitting NINE bystanders in addition to the shooter. And these were supposedly trained, practiced officers. What would one expect from the average (or, 50% of the time, below-average) armed bystander?

Sick kids

[Anonymous Coward]

We should be reading the text book on how to prevent this kind of tragedies. Treat cause and not sympthoms.

I don't see saved lives but 2 lost lives.

sad

[Anonymous Coward]

So sad the news is

Columbine really revolutionized the way law enforcement responds to active shooters.

instead of

Columbine really revolutionized the way society identifies and treats those in need of psychological support in order to avoid them turning into active shooters.

Re: sad

[quetwo]

I don't think it's that simple.

It's easy to buy somebody a military-grade weapon to respond to a shooting. A few buck, one-time charge to a department that wants to spend it. Heck, just think of all the uses that one-time charge would provide!

It's not easy to reform our health system (look at how they tried, then completely failed because of the political battles and lobbyists), where there would be an ongoing charge that people would be reminded of each and every year when they pay their taxes. Regardless if they get better services (like mental health services) for the same if not lower prices -- it became a perceived burden that is subject to the political whims each and every year there is a new congress that wants to push their current agenda.

In my mind, the reason why the USA has all these problems with guns is not because of the guns. It's because of the people (guns don't kill people -- people kill people). All of the comparables that you can look at in Europe, Asia, etc. where firearms are available (or even in many places where it is not), if somebody has a mental illness there are actually resources available to help them. In the USA getting any help for mental illnesses is discouraged either due to lack of insurance, the incorrect insurance (service A is covered, but you need service B, which is not), or even the fear that they find something worse and you end up having to sell your house to get basic coverage. I have a few friends that are taking care of others who have severe mental issues -- and even though they have good jobs they have to live like paupers because of all the stuff that isn't covered by the insurance they can afford (and even them, the people they are helping get treatment are only getting the bare minimal treatment) . A fellow engineer who makes $100k/yr is living with his mother who has dementia barely has enough to pay for gas each week. Her medical bills alone after insurance is still $5k/month. If that doesn't discourage you to get treatment, I don't know what will.

So what have we learned

[skovnymfe]

The way to deal with shooter situations is having a better emergency procedures? What about all the hidden surveillance and monitoring and CCTVs and metal detectors and RFID tags? What did they do to help?

Re:So what have we learned

[Carewolf]

The way to deal with shooter situations is having a better emergency procedures? What about all the hidden surveillance and monitoring and CCTVs and metal detectors and RFID tags? What did they do to help?

Ensure reelection of officials by pretending to do something?

Re:police arive within 'minutes'

[Anonymous Coward]

Schools today treat the kids like goats staked out for lions to kill and eat. If I want to cause mayhem and kill, where do I go? A "gun free zone"!

Hey, everyone, come here and perpetrate your crimes, no guns here to worry about!

Yeah, that's why schools all around the world are, basically, the biggest crime zones with huge death tolls...

Oh, wait, nope, school shootings are mostly the proud US tradition, with shooting incidents from all over Eurasia for all time counting less than US shootings just in past decade.

"Solution to shootings? More guns for everyone!"

This shows we still haven't really learned

[damn_registrars]

The lesson we keep ignoring is that the root of the overwhelming vast majority of these cases is the same: mental health. Our country continues to completely ignore the elephant in the room. Until we improve access to mental health care, and de-stigmatize the pursuit of mental health treatment, we will continue to have unstable individuals in our society who will do this to us. We don't necessarily need to lock them all up, many can be treated; but they all need access to help.

Our current health care system fails miserably at this. The Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010 (aka "affordable care act", aka "Obamacare") does almost nothing for this problem.

I Thought Lesson was "Don't Publicize Shootings"

[retroworks]

The "Stephen King" laws http://www.forbes.com/sites/josephgrenny/2012/12/13/the-media-is-an-accomplice-in-public-shootings-a-call-for-a-stephen-king-law/ and other calls to focus less media attention on these shootings http://www.reporternewspapers.net/2013/09/09/media-quick-publicize-school-shootings/ has apparently been ignored by Slashdot. The Lesson, or stuff that matters, is that these stories should be less newsworthy.

"But it shouldn’t require another Sandy Hook to make us realize something has to change. The school shooters are committing a grandiose form of suicide. Media, traditionally, doesn’t cover suicides, and is very careful when it does. It’s a long-standing custom, borne out of numerous studies from groups like the Suicide Prevention Resource Center and the National Institute of Mental Health.

“More than 50 research studies worldwide have found that certain types of news coverage can increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals,” the NIMH concluded. “The magnitude of the increase is related to the amount, duration and prominence of coverage.”

Re:no you just have lots and lots of stabbings and

[rubycodez]

Wrong. You ignore the elephant in the room. Take away the crimes of two inner city subcultures from the statistics and then the murder and violent crime rates are the same as Europe. You are focusing on a minute sliver of the pie of gun crime, and ignoring the real problem. Based on your myopic view, you would take away guns from people who have the right and ability to own properly own and use them.

Re:police arive within 'minutes'

[swamp boy]

"Its just a hobby, you folk don't have the right to cause 50,000 deaths a year for your hobby"

Change 'hobby' to 'social drinking'. How about we take this logic and apply it to alcohol (as it relates to deaths due to drunk driving)? Any takers? If not, why not?

Re:no you just have lots and lots of stabbings and

[cyber-vandal]

Until you take away the crimes of the inner city subcultures from Europe then they go up again. You think Europe doesn't have ultra-violent ghettoes and a drugs problem? You need to get out more.