What can we learn from school shootings?

Great Debates
1

With news from Montreal of another school rampage shooting, many questions come to my mind:

How can we detect people who may commit such atrocities, and prevent such shootings?
Early reports indicate Kimveer Gill (the shooter) gave many warning signs, not the least of which is his blog (haven’t been able to confirm the URL - busy site today) which describes his fantasies, angst, including photos of himself taken with knives and guns. I heard an interview on the radio today from the author of a book that describes the similarities amongst various school rampagers. Is there a profile to watch out for? Is such a profile predictive? What can be done to guide/help/restrain? such people?

What security measures are needed in response?
The same interview I heard mentions metal detectors and the like are the least effective. In my mind, effective or not, they certainly contribute to a culture of fear and mistrust - the cure may be worse than the disease in the long run. I’m encouraged by a decision today by the head of our local university (who himself attended Dawson in his youth) that no addition security measures will be implemented.

How effective were the police in response? What can be learned if it happens again?
The Montreal police say they learned after the shooting at Ecole Polytechnique (sp?) 17 years ago to enter early and “neutralize” the offender. Last time they spent to much time waiting for a perimeter to be set up. Since then they’ve developed training, result: this time the went in fast and shot and killed Gill - almost certainly saving many lives. (However, I heard that part of the fast response time is police were already nearby responding to an unrelated call)

A police official said one thing they learned THIS time is not to rely on cellphones to communicate with the media. In trying to get out the message, “Those with loved ones are advised to not come to the school at this time,” they found lines jammed by students and parents trying to call each other to make sure they’re all right.

Regarding communication with the media: The police released the name of the shooter long after it was well known. Reporters interviewed eyewitnesses, corroborated them with those that found the blog and knew long before the police confirmed who he was. One interviewer, asking the police to confirm said, “it’s obvious it’s him” to which the police rep said, “I must follow policy,” and wouldn’t confirm details “known” [none of these are exact quotes]. Should such policies change in response to light-speed internet fueled media attention?

There are many other thoughts questions; I’ll leave it at that.
Thankfully the prognosis for many of the injured is good - a number are still in critical condition and (as of what I’ve heard to date) there are no confirmed deaths (though one reported). My heart goes out to the victims and families.

2

These things happen. They happen less when communities, families and friends take care of one another, but they happen.

These events are an American sort of thing. The cases in America get a lot of attention.

On the 4th of July, 1976 (an easy date for me to remember) an elderly French farmer went into his little village with the shotgun he was allowed to keep for farm chores and killed several of his best-loved neighbors. Gun control cannot prevent this horrors, nor can more police power, nor any sort of government program.

3

This I think will be the most significant matter, as far as police response is concerned. These school shootings aren’t hostage situations where a slow careful response can limit bloodshed - the only good response is to charge in and kill the shooter(s) as quickly as possible.

4

Autopsy results state that Gill turned his gun on himself and killed himself, but after being shot in the arm by the police.

Regardless, I think the quick response by police was the key factor in this event, and will be an important thing to remember in future events (sadly, there will be more). I think Columbine had the same problems as the Polytechnique massacre - police waited too long to get inside. Gill managed to hurt 20 people in, IIRC, about 15 minutes. He apparently had hundreds of rounds of ammo in the car as well as whatever was on him - perhaps he considered going out for more at one point? If the police had waited, who knows how many more people would be hurt or dead?

I don’t know if there’s a profile for this sort of thing… perhaps. There’s a lot of talk about “goth” culture, and violent videogames, and listening to Marilyn Manson (why is that somehow the clincher for these news reporters?) I don’t think there is enough evidence to say that any of that had to do with Gill, or Harris and Klebold’s decisions to go on a rampage. I think theres a tendancy to try and identify “obvious” signs after the fact, but that ignores all the other people displaying certain behaviour who would never dream of doing anything like this. “Killer was a goth, he listened to Marilyn Manson, other goths listen to him too, they might also be killers” is kind of bad logic to me. Kind of like the paranoia surrounding Muslims. Profiling can be dangerous. However, I think family, friends, neighbours, teachers of these murderers probably could see the signs before, but didn’t know… I think there is validity in studying their behaviour and maybe being able to help or at least deter other young, disaffected youth.

I don’t know if schools need to increase security - 5 more officers/guards, 10 more, 100 more… might have stopped Gill sooner, but probably wouldn’t have prevented him from shooting who he could. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone to Dawson. Maybe he would have gone to Concordia, or McGill, or John Abbott or Vanier or Champlain or Marianapolis, or a mall, or a movie theatre, or… We don’t know why a 25 year old targeted a school that (from what I hear, or rather don’t hear) he wasn’t even a student at. Most Cegep students graduate at age 19 or so. Like I said above, understanding his life, his motivations, will be much more valuable in the long run than adding guards or other security measures. Cameras, guards, metal detectors… none of them are deterents for someone who is that messed up.

I think the police are doing the right thing with respect to communication to the media - even if Gill’s name was known before police confirmation, for the police to acknowledge it puts a bias on their investigation. What if it wasn’t Gill, but one of his brothers, who decided to act out what he found on his brother’s website? I mean, that’s probably far-fetched, but with so much confusion and questions, I think it’s more valuable to everyone to have a source of true, confirmed information to act on. Look at the MPSIMS thread… at the time it was posted, the news had “4 dead, 16 injured”. The media was jumping on the rumour of “3 or 4 gunmen”. Misinformation is a dangerous thing.

There is criticism of Dawson College’s administration with respect to their response and effort to help the surviving, escaping students. Concordia’s Student Union stepped in and organised communication networks, food, water, blankets (I don’t know how urgently that was needed, but a good response none-the-less… I was impressed at the thought to provide clean clothes… I’d be desperate to remove blood-splattered clothing). I don’t know where Dawson’s administrators were during all of this, but possibly they were more concerned with dealing with cops, or cell phone lines being maxed out prevented them from following whatever plan they had? I don’t have any information to judge them, but whatever the students felt was lacking from their admin needs to be addressed for “next time” (“next time” hopefully never happening, but an evacuation due to a fire or gas leak or something would require similar response). Really, though, who plans for this stuff? I didn’t have a cell phone in Cegep, and had something happened while I was there, I had no easy way to contact my family or friends. I had no preplanned meeting point outside my school for this sort of thing. So is the students’ criticism of Dawson admin even valid? Is there really anything to be done for 10 000 people in a shorter time span than what took place? I don’t know.

Overall, though, I think this horrible situation was incredibly well handled compared to what I know about past events, and I’m grateful that only 1 person was fatally injured - it could have been so much worse. I send my condolences to Anastasia De Sousa’s family, and I hope the other victims will all recover and we can all begin to heal.

5

School shootings are such a freak occurrence that I’m worried about what would happen in those “detection” efforts. Maybe some basic mental health units for everybody could be instituted, although that doesn’t sound too effective. Any ‘prevention’ would wind up focusing on goths [the word appears right at the beginning of the OP’s link] and other such alleged groups; students who are maybe a little pretentious but not actually a threat to anybody. I think that would make school into an even more miserable experience for kids who tend to feel lonely and picked on to begin with. The VampireFreaks site Gill belonged too had almost 600,000 members, and if every single one of them was making posts like his, most of them would be blowing smoke. I don’t know if you can call those warning signs. Real signs would probably show up in a psychiatric evaluation, not a message board.

And as mnemosyne mentioned, it’s worth noting that the shooter wasn’t a student or former student of the college. I would imagine that he picked that site because of the earlier shooting. I’m not sure how a school would make itself safe from non-students by profiling.

6

Goths eh? A couple years ago it was kids playing duke nukem, before that it was kids who watched the highlander, and before that it was kids who thought Jesus sent them down to kill people.

Put a kid in a home environment where he’s brought to want to kill someone and he’ll grab onto the first idea that lets him go ahead with that. Outside of putting in some sort of psychological tests on all students, with the option to then observe the family and potentially extract kids from their homes, you’re not going to be able to do much. Good luck getting that passed.

7

There hasn’t been an earlier shooting at Dawson College. The earlier shooting was at the École Ploytechnique, affiliated with the University of Montreal - that’s an engineering school, and that shooter specifically targeted women.

I don’t know if Gill ever was a Dawson student, or is one. What I meant in my other post (and I admit it’s oddly worded) was that in all the news coverage I’ve seen so far, no one is saying Gill is or was a student. His age would imply that he isn’t at the moment, but there are continuing education programs, and there’s nothing to stop you from going back to school as a mature student. I, at least, am completely in the dark as to his connection to Dawson college specifically.

8

One learns to stay low and move quickly away from the shooter amid the chaos. Most likely, the shooter won’t hit you.

Other than that, consider it a tragedy if you must. Perhaps you live each day “to the fullest” from now on, whatever that means. But IMO, it’s probably not worth dwelling on, since bigger tragedies and horrors happen on this planet all the time. Those just don’t happen to have big media coverage.

I recall being shocked that around 15,000 people die every day from various causes. But after crunching some numbers, it seems right. How much time are you gonna spend grieving for each of those people? You could possibly spend six seconds on each person provided you never sleep.

9

This sums up my thoughts precisely (adding “or prevention” to “detection”). There’s a headline this morning saying Harper is considering toughening up gun laws (haven’t read the article yet). Where is the more important need: “fixing” the legislation or being seen to be doing something…anything?

Another thought: I’ve always been skeptical of “grief councellors” that are rushed in after a traumatic event. My view has been they too are an unnecessary “something…anything” - that at best they are a waste of effort/money, at worst contribute to a coddled society.

However, this event has caused me to reconsider. I can only imagine what horror it must have been - and for the students who successfully ran away, how perhaps starting today the realization of how close they came to dying. Even more difficult for those students close to the direct victims - and yet more for the victims and their families. Maybe grief councellors are a sign that as a society we are maturing and learning better how to take care of one another.

10

Sorry, my mistake.

The cop in this story said he was not a student or former student.

11

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
These things happen. They happen less when communities, families and friends take care of one another, but they happen. /QUOTE]
That is the most eloquent, concise and accurate statement I’ve ever seen about this subject. The thread should end with this statement – nothing more needs be said.

In my humble, unresearched and utterly unsupportable opinion.

12

Mod: I fat-fingered that post. Can ya’ fix it for me?

Thanks