Many School Shootings Are Also Terrorist Bombings
Newly released information shows the Michigan State school shooter watched MSU campus tours, murder documentaries, school shooting videos…
Newly released information shows the Michigan State school shooter watched MSU campus tours, murder documentaries, school shooting videos, arsons, and searched terms included “people that shot up colleges”, “mass killings in college”, “the bomber”, and, “the nail bomber.”
“The Nail Bomber” query is in reference to a series of neo-Nazi attacks in London in 1999, when improvised explosives were placed on busy public streets during three consecutive weekends. 140 people were injured and 3 were killed.
Many school shootings are planned as both shootings and bombings, including an averted plot in Texas last month where the attacker had multiple assembled explosives with Nazi symbols drawn on them. A recent school shooter in Serbia had 4 Molotov cocktails that he didn’t ignite because students had already fled through a backdoor in the classroom. School shootings are rarely planned as just a shooting.
Classroom lockdown/barricade procedures are the worst possible action to take if an attacker is planning to ignite flammable liquids or detonate IEDs. School security procedures continue to be based on assumptions and personal assertions instead of the actual details from analyzing these attacks.
School Shootings Are Terrorist Attacks
Correctly labeling school shootings as terrorism allows the entire national security enterprise to study and prevent them. If someone is researching shootings, bombings, buying supplies, and conducting pre-attack surveillance of a specific target, why isn’t this activity generating alerts within the intelligence community?
When shots were fired at Michigan State, there was uncoordinated chaos for 5 hours despite the entire attack being captured on high resolution CCTV. Police and school officials did not know who was shooting or where the attack was occurring. Lacking situational awareness from not knowing where the attack was happening, students did not know if they should run away or take shelter inside. If there was better technology to immediately provide images and location of the shooter, students and staff would have had sufficient time to get to safety.
Michigan State did not have the best security technology available. While police responded to more than 1,000 9–1–1 calls with different descriptions and locations of the shooter, if nail bombs had been placed around the campus, it would have been a far worse situation.
Solutions
The best solutions are crisis intervention and threat assessment programs that can spot red flags, remove access to firearms, and help a person in crisis before they walk onto a campus with a gun.
School shootings like the one at Michigan State are preventable. When someone is searching online and plotting an attack for months, we need to spot the warning signs and take action. If that doesn’t work, we need to plan for the worst case scenarios by understanding that a shooting might also include plans for a bombing. When an attack happens, we need the best technology available to quickly understand what is happening and get people to safety.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database and a national expert on school shootings. Listen to my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio and the New England Journal of Medicine.