The thin blue line held in the Covenant School shooting. Six people were killed: Headmistress Katherine Koonce, custodian Mike Hill, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak and three nine-year-old, third-grade students named Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs — name them, please — but the 28-year-old shooter who picked Covenant School as her target had intended much greater carnage. Only Nashville’s solid police response kept the final tally from exploding into double digits. Once Audrey, now Aiden Hale had intended to go out blazing, leaving bodies throughout the school, as part of yet another suicide at the hands of law enforcement officers.
I wish we hadn’t named Hale. We have to stop naming these shooters, giving them recognition. Naming them posthumously encourages others, even when our Aidens have gone beyond reach. Unfortunately the Hale story was too juicy. It overwhelmed the sense and sensibilities of news pundits. He was trans with recently changed pronouns. Years past, she had once attended the devastated school. He had been quietly and privately stashing guns, hiding his crazy just well enough to escape detection. Well enough is all it takes today.
Eduhonesty: My last sentence captures the point I want to make: well enough is all it takes. It’s easy to be a school shooter, so very easy, and we are scarcely acknowledging this fact.
I could go out and buy an AR-15 today and no one around me would be the wiser.* No one would alert my husband or anyone else. Aiden’s mother was a social media soccer mom who clicked on all the right links to get into the Active Parent and Good Mom category. Mom appears to have been clueless, though, and I’d like to address those online presences who say she must have known or should have known. Ummm… If her child chose not to tell her, how was she to find out?
Eduhonesty: Straight to the heart of the matter: I can buy an AR-15 NOW if I feel like it. My dad might even have one stashed somewhere, making the process easier. How many people have family members with gun collections?
| Country or subnational area | Estimate of civilian firearms per 100 persons | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 120.5 |
| 2 | Falkland Islands | 62.1 |
| 3 | Yemen | 52.8 |
I have no mental health history to raise flags, but if I did and lied about that history, who would find out? There’s no national database of people who have received mental health care, and if there was, I privately suspect it might hold the names of half the country. How many people in the US are using Prozac, Lexapro or some pharmaceutical cousin? I’ve sat through those discussions of side effects, whether to start, whether to change, whether to add yoga and meditation etc., and I’m sure many people reading this post have done the same.
Yet in most of this country, NO barriers exist to planning a school shooting for an adult. Few barriers exist for millions of kids. Our legislative leaders can’t seem to ban or sometimes even restrict the guns. But absolutely nothing else will work — and talk about putting more guns in schools is simply inviting more elephants into an overcrowded room.
Those pundits who claim we need more armed officers in schools honestly appear not to grasp the situation at all: school shootings are a popular version of planned suicide by unlucky cop, deliberately intended to be another horrific story for the national news. Shooters WANT to be shot, want to rack up viewership numbers even when they can no longer see or read the stories, posts and tweets they generate. That Plan B, Go-to-Jail-for-Life, is not on the list of their intended or expected endings. The main effect of more armed guards in schools will be to change a shooter’s chosen point of entry. Details of the masterplan will be altered, and the net effect may be to make the death toll even HIGHER, as shooters plan events they might otherwise have left to chance.
*Actually, buying that gun is a bit more complicated for me because I am in Illinois. If I were in Wisconsin, less than an hour away, all I would need is to be 18 years of age or older. The state would tell the ATF, but no one would tell my family. About the only gun not allowed in Wisconsin is a sawed-off shotgun. Here’s a quick picture of the current situation: There are only ten states where assault rifles are even restricted. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/assault-rifles-legality-by-state