LETTER: No ‘one-shot’ solution to school shootings problem

Dear editor: There is much discussion now after the latest school shooting around guns, guns control, and school security. People seem to be searching for a “one shot solution” . I don’t think that is possible. States are not the same and school conditions are not alike. Conditions in Alaska are about as far from Delaware or Rhode Island as you can get. Even within Alaska, a shooting in a school in Anchorage or Fairbanks where a massive response including Special Weapons and Tactics folks is only minutes away does not compare to Su Valley where a single Trooper response could be 30 minutes away. Even worse are the true “rural” schools in Alaska where armed response of any kind could be hours away when the average school shooting incident averages a few minutes in length. Schools in highly-populated areas may be able to afford an armed guard at the door with a double door entry and even a scanner such as airports use, while smaller, more remote schools have to search for different solutions to their security problems. Gun control folks have focused the AR-style rifles and insist on trying to restrict access to those weapons, but the only school shooting that I am familiar with is the Bethel shooting in 1997 that was carried out using a Mossberg 500 pump shotgun that could have the capacity of 9 (8+1 with the plug removed). While I understand that killing 9 students is better than killing 17, do we want to restrict access to those weapons as well? Josh, the student killed in Bethel, was my sons’ best friend when we lived in Bethel although we had left Bethel by the time of the Josh Palacios was killed. Evan Ramsey was a kid with a troubled background who was, I believe, fostered by the Superintendent of the Lower Kuskokwim School District at the time of the incident. There are many troubled teens throughout Alaska that fit the same profile as Evan.

I think school and law enforcement officials should be allowed to address these young people without fear of repercussions. A retired teacher friend of mine once told me that when she started teaching, she could send a note home about behavior and the behavior was corrected, but by the time she retired, if she sent a note, text or email home about a behavior problem, she would end up spending much of the next day defending herself against the parent or parents of the offender—somehow the misbehavior was the teacher’s fault, no the student’s. It would be a good idea to allow school staff to carry concealed weapons on a voluntary basis. I have heard that at least one state has a program that allows school staff to carry on campus. First, it is voluntary. Only those who wish to carry and are willing to bear the cost in time and money are allowed to do so. Allegedly, it requires a very extensive background check and a 3-month training program tailored to the chaos and mayhem that exist in these violent situations. The applicant must provide their own weapons subject to conditions imposed by the district and local law enforcement. While I have not heard of other conditions, it seems logical to me that the weapon must be carried on their person at all times within the school campus, and that there should be a “secret code”, such as a badge or bandana that would signal to responding law enforcement officials that a person was a “good guy/gal”. Again, allegedly, the identities of these Certified On-Campus Security folks are totally secret known only to the law enforcement officers who train them and the school principal—that is why so little is known about the program. The trainees are not allowed to discuss their training with anyone as knowledge of their identity would make them targets in a violent situation. This kind of situation might be applicable in the more rural parts of our state. Anyway, school security should be near the top of any budget discussions. Students in our schools deserve to be protected from harm.

Don Hepler

Meadow Lakes