Every new shooting things get a little heavier for her. Last year there was one in our area, which was even worse.
There are occasional threats. Usually it’s kids on social media thinking it’s funny or badass or wanting to get out of school, and investigations happen and reveal that it’s just stupid kids being stupid. Last week school went virtual for a day because of some threats. Nothing came of it.
Yesterday somebody made a very specific social media threat toward a couple of schools in the district, including my wife’s school. Students reported it, police responded.
They found the kid in the parking lot of one of the schools with a loaded gun and an extended magazine.
Everything’s fine, no one was hurt, school goes on as normal. She loves her job. But some days retirement really can’t come soon enough.
She has a full year of sick days banked. But she also has a concert coming up (choir teacher) and hates missing rehearsals. I expect she’ll take a day after the concert.
It’s an odd psychology that both plans to do something like this all the way up to being immediately ready to attack, and also in effect calls the cops on themselves early enough to allow them to be stopped.
I suppose it’s a fool’s errand expecting rational behavior from the irrational. But still and all, if I was so angry / twisted / whatever to want to shoot up a school, and goal-directed enough to complete 100% of the preparations and get in position, I’d want to succeed at shooting up a school. Not foil my own plot at the 99% completed point.
I doubt that there’s a lot of linear thinking involved. No consideration of cause and effect. When you decide to do sometime like this, it’s pure instinct and emotion, not rationality. I don’t know that the kids expected to ultimately get away with it, but they ran from the police when confronted in the car, so it seems like they weren’t trying to get caught beforehand.
At any rate, I’m happy they advertised their intentions.
This American Life did a story about some kids who planned an attack, but were stopped before it happened. One of the kids’ father asked his son what would have happened to his sister, who was in the school and the kid told him that he hadn’t thought of that. He was just completely wrapped up in a bizarre fantasy.