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

[DamonHD]

Seems obvious to most Europeans. And my emphasis is on 'easy'; not never no way ever, else I'd be all for unconditionally banning bleach and kitchen knives and human-driven cars too. This needs a more nuanced fix than most would like to admit I think.

I *never* want to see permits for concealed carry or similar in the UK, BTW.

Rgds

Damon

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

[Cardcaptor_RLH85]

Legally speaking, every male American citizen between the ages of 17-45 who is not an active duty member of the armed forces and every female member of the National Guard is a member of the 'militia of the United States' by federal law (10 USC 311). That militia is formed for the purpose of draft selection but, it's still a militia set up by federal law and if that doesn't meet the requirements for "A well regulated Militia" then I don't know what does. I, being a 28 year old male citizen of the United States, therefore consider myself to be a member of the well regulated militia of the United States and therefore have the right to bear arms. Even if I have not to this point chosen to exercise that particular right.

Re:Rule #1

[Binestar]

The constitution doesn't say "in a militia".

Re:Rule #1

[Greyfox]

We're afraid if they terk oer guns, some king will come in and try to oppress us again. As long as we have our guns, we're quite happy to live with a corrupt government that's happy to stack the deck in the favor of the wealthiest citizens in exchange for the funding to stay in power. We're quite happy to sit around and watch them dismantle all the social safety nets and worker's benefits that our grandparents' unions negotiated, and the only down side is one or two massacres a day. They're so common now that usually if only two or three people get shot, it won't even be reported on the national news. And we like it that way. Obviously. Anyone who tries to terk oer guns quickly finds themselves un-elected. After Sandy Hook, a couple of Colorado Democrats passed some legislation that stated something to the effect of if you were mentally ill you couldn't get a gun. One of them was recalled and another resigned because it looked as if the recall effort was going to pass. But hey, at least some king isn't oppressing us!

Re:Rule #1

[Major Blud]

I think you're the one to misread the constitution:

"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

This was clarified in District of Columbia v. Heller:

"The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

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

[tranquilidad]

This is a common argument that stems from, I believe, not only a lack of historical context but also the absence of actually reading the plain language of the Bill of Rights or in understanding it's underlying architecture and design purpose.

Most people don't know the preamble to the Bill of Rights which starts:

"The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."

For some reason, there exists a widely held belief that the Bill of Rights grants rights to the people when, in actuality, the Bill of Rights places specific restrictions on the government. The plain language of the individual amendments support the preamble:

Amendment I - "Congress shall make no law..."
Amendment II - "...shall not be infringed."
Amendment III - "No Soldier shall..."
Amendment IV - "...shall not be violated..."

The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights retained by the people but is rather a list of prohibitions placed upon the government so they don't misconstrue and, therefore, misapply, the powers the document granted to the government.

The overall architecture of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights does not in any way support the argument that the second amendment is a grant of power to state militias. In Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court finally acknowledged as such.

You should take this opportunity to read the U.S. Constitution and its amendments. You may gain an appreciation for the beauty of the document and what it actually means. You may even gain a better appreciation for the argument many of us espouse about the presumption of liberty.

Re:Rule #1

[Ksevio]

They have them at home, but carrying them is highly restricted and ammo is well regulated. The Swiss aren't carrying around handguns like in the US.

Re:Rule #1

[MyLongNickName]

If you take a tiny handful of small neighborhoods out of the equation (places like Flint, Michigan) the United States is actually an extremely peaceful place

Your statement is completely false. Take a look at the murder rate by state and you will find that the lowest rate state is New Hampshire. Guess what? New Hampshire still has a higher murder rate (barely) than Western, Northern or Southern Europe. 42 of the 50 states have a more than double rate. 37 triple. 28 quadruple. 18 quintuple.

So no, taking a couple ZIP codes out of the equation will not get us to where civilized countries homicide rates are.

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

[HornWumpus]

School shootings are basically suicides.

It has been observed that suicide is kind of like a disease. Those prone to suicide copy the methods used by others. Suicide that gets publicity often brings on a wave of copycats.

For example, in Germany, the 'ghost driver' suicide method is an occasionally problem (deliberately driving wrong way on the autobahn killing themselves and those in the oncoming car). In most of the world going the wrong way on the highway is about being very drunk or very senile, in Germany it's an angry bastard killing him/her self and taking out a random car full of people.

IMHO we give these bastards too much publicity. It's partly on the gun grabbers that run the media.

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]

Feel free to live in a city/county with strict gun laws with a high violent crime rate while the rest of us with guns live in one with a low violent crime rate.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/05/14/disarming-realities-as-gun-sales-soar-gun-crimes-plummet/

But no amount of facts will convince you I'm sure, since you want to "believe" guns are bad.

A tragedy in any other country is success here

[deanklear]

"Every country is unique, but Australia is more similar to the US than is, say, Japan or England. We have a frontier history and a strong gun culture. Each state and territory has its own gun laws, and in 1996 these varied widely between the jurisdictions. At that time Australia's firearm mortality rate per population was 2.6/100,000 -- about one-quarter the US rate, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the US Center for Disease Control. Today the rate is under 1/100,000 -- less than one-tenth the US rate. Those figures refer to all gun deaths -- homicide, suicide and unintentional. If we focus on gun homicide rates, the US outstrips Australia 30-fold.

The 1996 reforms made gun laws stronger and uniform across Australia. Semi-automatic rifles were prohibited (with narrow exceptions), and the world's biggest buyback saw nearly 700,000 guns removed from circulation and destroyed. The licensing and registration systems of all states and territories were harmonised and linked, so that a person barred from owning guns in one state can no longer acquire them in another. All gun sales are subject to screening (universal background checks), which means you cannot buy a gun over the internet or at a garage sale.
-
Australia didn't ban guns. Hunting and shooting are still thriving. But by adopting laws that give priority to public safety, we have saved thousands of lives."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/14/america-mass-murder-australia-gun-control-saves-lives

Re:A tragedy in any other country is success here

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK isn't gun free as many think - if you've got a need for a shotgun or a rifle (eg farmers, sport shooters) then it's pretty straightforward to get a license. The big, lifesaving difference is that we don't just have guns lying around. Speak to anyone who holds a firearms license and you'll find they have much the same attitude as a range safety officer in the US, rather than the attitude of somebody who keeps a loaded pistol next to the bed in an unlocked drawer - if a gun in the UK is not being used it's kept locked in a metal safe, bolted to the floor, with the ammunition kept in a seperate locked box. The idea that people can just have a gun without adopting some obvious and strict responsibilities is the main difference.

Re:A tragedy in any other country is success here

[xaxa]

I think you should probably visit the UK and Australia before posting any more of these ridiculous statements.

Regarding daily life, they're more free. There are fewer laws, a less-corrupt police force, a better justice system.

Do you really think the US government would have any more trouble controlling citizens than the Australian government?

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:police arive within 'minutes'

[Runaway1956]

I suggest that people with your attitude just GROW UP. I submit that people are dangerous. Almost all people have the capacity to kill, given the proper motivation. The people who are made infamous by these school shootings have found that motivation. A lot of the victims of these shooters have found the motivation as well, but they were denied the tools by society, and by people like you.

You act as if guns are the only tools which might be used by a mass murderer. This is slashdot - why don't we submit a survey, to find out how many people know the basics for making a bomb? It's not terribly complex, after all. A novice can collect a few pounds of explosive material, and design a simple time delay fuse, or even an impact fuse. A novice in junior high school can find the basic instructions on line, and begin to refine those instructions into a plan. I'm wondering how many elementary school fifth and sixth grade kids could do it, given strong enough motivation.

Then, we have gases. If guns are hard to get, gassing a school may become a more inviting method of mass murder. Or poison.

I've got a better idea. Instead of pointing fingers at the NRA, take a good look at Hollyweird. 24 hours a day, movies are playing that make teen idols of people shooting up shopping malls, residential areas, downtown areas, office buildings - you name it. I submit that the MPAA has invested untold billions of dollars, brainwashing the less stable elements of society to use firearms as a solution to their problems.

Of course, you can come to my house to confiscate my weapons.

Oh, what's that? You're not going to do that? You're going to send some other mother's children to do the confiscating? Yeah, that's what I thought. All mouth, and no action. You want to give money, and give guns, to young men who desire power and authority so that THEY can come bust my doors down, and take MY weapons.

If and when you and yours have achieved this Utopian police state that you dream of, I hope you enjoy it. I can see it now, Chicago Land all across the United States.

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:police arive within 'minutes'

[Arker]

Do you even read this stuff and try the laugh test before you post it?

Local tribesmen raided a school. Not someone at the school going off shooting, wild 'indians' raided it. Not the same thing at all.

And then the next item is a guy that shot a headmaster so abusive that the jury acquitted him. Sounds like an interesting case but barely relevant here.

That list doesnt actually get going until much more recent years.

Re:that's been tried. Rape is bad, m'kay

[Richard_at_work]

The problem with your statistics is that the gun culture in the UK was drastically different to the US before the ban anyway, as basically no one could ever be expected to be carrying a firearm on their person, and the increase in reported crimes comes hand in hand with a change in how crimes are recorded and reported, and increased immigration due to EU law changes.

Before the ban in the UK, firearms were still highly regulated and controlled - the police would visit your home to ensure you had a gun safe, and check to see you were correctly reporting your ammunition counts etc, and if they saw a problem then you had your license revoked. There never was a culture of people carrying guns around in their purses or coat pockets, so nothing changed there in potential threats to attackers. Concealed carry licenses are still available today, exactly the same as they were prior to the ban - you can still apply for one, and the rules haven't changed on whether you would get one or not.

Re: police arive within 'minutes'

[Albanach]

We have hundreds of millions of people compared to Europe's tens of millions.

What do you mean? Are you saying you combine all the US states but only consider EU members states individually so none of them get into the hundred plus million? Or do you really have no idea how many people live in Europe?

Here's the population of some of the larger countries. Slashdot won't let me post them all because of the spam filter. Total population in the EU is over 500 million.

  Germany: 80,640,000
  United Kingdom: 64,231,000
  France: 63,820,000
  Italy: 59,789,000
  Spain: 46,958,000
  Poland: 38,548,000
  Romania: 19,858,000
  Netherlands: 16,795,000
  Belgium: 11,162,000
  Greece: 10,758,000
  Portugal: 10,609,000
  Czech Republic: 10,519,000

Re: police arive within 'minutes'

[oobayly]

Ok, so we let you cherry pick - you can remove the two regions with the highest murder rate - DC and Louisiana (whose rates are 150% of the 3rd highest state - you get a rate of 4.11/100k

In fact, you have to remove the top 12 states before you get below the European level of 3.5/100k. But wait, if you get to remove your outliers, so do we, so I remove our top two - Greenland and Russia (Europe has really expanded since I left school) - which gives us 2.5/100k. The US would have to remove *half* of the states as "outliers" to get to that level.

However, I disagree with the gun control advocates - removing guns won't reduce your murder rate by much - you'd just find a different way to kill each other.

Why are the police are claiming "credit"?

[runeghost]

It appears that the timeline is:

Shooter enters school and shoots 1 student.

Shooter kills himself.

Police respond.

Police claim credit.

Unless I'm missing something here, it doesn't look like the police response accomplished anything. They arrived after the crime was over and done with.

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.