Where school shooters get their guns

"There are more laws on the books today restricting the use and availability of firearms than 10 and 20 years ago, and yet such shooting incidents are happening that were unheard of then," says Trish Gregory, spokeswoman for the NRA. Fifteen states, including California, require firearms in the home to be locked away, she says, but despite these laws, the number of homicides by young people has continued to grow.

In the past, "it was common in several states for kids to carry rifles and handguns on the school bus for use in target practice after school," says Ms. Gregory. "We think there has been a change in the moral fiber of youth that is leading to this."

But the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence charges that the availability of guns is a clear factor. Handguns in the home increase the likelihood of suicide by a factor of five, says spokesman Desmond Riley, and increase the likelihood of homicide threefold.

"The events of San Diego and other recent school shootings prove this," says Mr. Riley.

Still, the authors of the Secret Service study, as well as many leading experts, say the issue is more complex. They say a whole host of factors from societal mores and community values to family life and entertainment make drawing any conclusions difficult.

"You can find isolated cases to support every cause and position on gun ownership and availability," says Dewey Cornell, a professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "In addition to issues of access is how our culture values guns as an instrument of power in movies, entertainment, and video - so much so that they are overvalued as a tool by 13- to 15-year-olds who have seen them as a method to solve problems as long as they can remember."

The bullying factor

Helen Smith, a forensic criminologist in Tennessee who works with juveniles in court and has written a book on adolescent violence, says what makes kids kill has nothing to do with the availability of weapons, but rather, is the result of exposure to ridicule, and emotional cruelty.

"Kids that have been pushed beyond the brink will go ahead and make the effort to find whatever weapons they need to carry out their plan," she says.

Ms. Smith's observation is supported by some of the evidence of the NTAC study. The survey looked only at incidents of school attacks in which the school was deliberately chosen as a location important to the shooter, rather than incidents that arbitrarily happened at a school.

"A lot of the post-mortem analyses by press and experts is that these events are caused at the last minute by kids who just snapped and happened to have weapons," says Marissa Reddy, co-author of the study. "But our analysis shows they didn't just wake up one morning and say, 'I am going to take a gun and shoot someone today.' Most had plans for many days, others planned for weeks, months even years."

Relations with parents

Beyond the simple availability of guns, say many experts, it is a meaningful relationship with adults or family that is more important in determining the inappropriate use of firearms.

"There are bad parental relationships running through all these episodes," says Dave Kopel, director of the Independence Institute in Golden, Co.

"When you find parents who are involved in what their kids are up to, it becomes not about who knows how to shoot, who doesn't, who has access, who doesn't, who is socialized into guns or not - it becomes about what it should be: who has a sense of proportion, who has conquered their sense of hatred of others, who has developed tolerance," he says. "Parental responsibility is at the core of this."

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

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