How to Stop School Shootings

    By John R. Lott, Jr.

    This week's horrific shootings in Arkansas have, predictably, spurred calls or more gun
    control. But it's worth noting that the shootings occurred in one of the few places in Arkansas
    where possessing a gun is illegal. Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi the three states that
    have had deadly shootings in public schools over the past half-year all allow law-abiding
    adults to carry concealed handgun for self-protection, except in public schools. Indeed,
    federal law generally prohibits guns within 1000 feet of a school.

    Gun prohibitionists concede that banning guns around schools has not quite worked as
    intended but their response has been to call for more regulations of guns. Yet what might
    appear to be the most obvious policy may actually cost lives. When gun control laws are
    passed, it is law-abiding citizens, not would-be criminals, who adhere to them. Obviously the
    police cannot be everywhere, so these laws risk creating situations in which the good guys
    cannot defend themselves from the bad ones.

    Consider a fact hardly mentioned during the massive news coverage of the October 1997
    shooting spree at a high school in Pearl, Miss.: An assistant principal retrieved a gun from his
    car and physically immobilized the gunman for a full 41/2 minutes while waiting for the
    police to arrive. The gunman had already fatally shot two students (after earlier stabbing his
    mother to death). Who knows how many lives the assistant principal saved by his prompt
    response?

    Allowing teachers and other law-abiding adults to carry concealed handguns in schools would
    not only make it easier to stop shootings in progress, it could also help deter shootings from
    ever occurring. Twenty-five or more years ago in Israel, terrorists would pull out machine
    guns in malls and fire away at civilians. However, with expanded concealed-handgun use by
    Israeli citizens, terrorists soon found the ordinary people around them pulling pistols on them.
    Suffice it to say, terrorists in Israel no longer engage in such public shootings to respond.

    The one recent shooting of school children in Israel further illustrates these points. On March
    13.1997, seven seventh and eighth-grade Israeli girls were shot to death by a Jordanian
    soldier while they visited Jordan's so-called Island of Peace. The Los Angeles Times reports
    that the Israelis had "complied with Jordanian requests to leave their weapons behind when
    they entered the border enclave. Otherwise, they might have been able to stop the shooting,
    several parents said."

    Together with my colleague William Landes, I have studied multiple-victim public shootings
    in the U.S. from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at east two people were killed
    or injured in a public place; to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas we excluded
    shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery. The U.S. averaged 21
    such shootings per year, with an average of 1.8 people killed and 2.7 wounded in each one.

    We examined a whole range of different gun laws as well as other methods of deterrence,
    such as the death penalty. However, only one policy succeeded in reducing deaths and
    injuries from these shootings-allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns.

    The effect of "shall-issue" concealed handgun laws-which give adults the right to carry
    concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental
    illness-has been dramatic. Thirty-one states now have such laws. When states passed them
    during the 19 years we studied, the number of multiple-victim public shootings declined by
    84%. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90%, injuries by 82%. Higher
    arrest rates and increased use of the death penalty slightly reduced the incidence of these
    events, but the effects were never statistically significant.

    With over 19,600 people murdered in 1996, those killed in multiple victim public shootings
    account for fewer than 0.2% of the total. Yet these are surely the murders that attract
    national as well as international attention, often for days after the attack. Victims recount
    their feelings of utter helplessness as a gunman methodically shoots his cowering prey.

    Unfortunately, much of the public policy debate is driven by lopsided coverage of gun use.
    Tragic events like those in Arkansas receive massive news coverage, as they should, but
    discussions of the 2.5 million times each year that people use guns defensively including
    cases in which public shootings are stopped before they happen--are ignored. Dramatic
    stories of mothers who prevented their children from being kidnapped by carjackers seldom
    even make the local news.

    Attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, have backfired. Instead
    of making school safe for children, we have made them safe for those intent on harming our
    children. Current school policies fire teachers who even accidentally bring otherwise legal
    concealed handguns to school. We might consider reversing this policy and begin rewarding
    teachers who take on the responsibility to help protect children.