Solutions - Enough!

Solutions to Prevent School Gun Violence

In order to effectively address violence in our schools, we must first acknowledge that school violence is, in part, a gun violence problem. Many “comprehensive” school safety plans have been proposed over the last 20 years. Few have thoroughly addressed the issue common in all school shootings: easy access to guns for those at risk of committing harm. We firmly believe that any effective school safety plan must involve an effort to enact gun safety policies that enable intervention before a prospective shooter can get their hands on a gun. These policies work hand in hand with school-based interventions to create safer school climates and to intervene before a student becomes a shooter.

ENACT AND ENFORCE SECURE FIREARM STORAGE LAWS

As with the shooter at Oxford High School, the most common sources of guns used in school shootings and across all school gun violence incidents are the shooter’s home or the homes of friends or relatives. This is unsurprising, as nearly 4.6 million American children live in homes with at least one gun that is loaded and unlocked. We recommend that states enact and enforce firearm storage laws. In addition, policymakers should promote public awareness programs that can encourage secure gun storage and induce behavior change.

These laws require that people store firearms securely when they are not in their possession in order to prevent unauthorized access. Under these laws, generally, when a person accesses a firearm and does harm with it, the person who failed to securely store the firearm is responsible. A common form of secure storage laws, child access prevention laws, are narrower, and they hold individuals liable only when minors access firearms that are not securely stored. Most states and the District of Columbia currently have some form of secure gun storage. In addition, several cities, including New York City and San Francisco, have passed secure storage laws.

Gun Storage Law

Studies show that these laws save lives, especially as they reduce unintentional shootings and firearm suicides. One study found that households that locked both firearms and ammunition were associated with a 78 percent lower risk of self-inflicted firearm injuries and an 85 percent lower risk of unintentional firearm injuries among children and teenagers than those that locked neither. Another study estimated that if half of households with children that contain at least one unlocked gun switched to locking all of their guns, one-third of youth gun suicides and unintentional deaths could be prevented, saving an estimated 251 young lives in a single year. Given what is known about the source of guns in school gun violence, these laws can help prevent underage shooters from accessing unsecured guns in homes and prevent mass shootings and other violent incidents. Enforcement and public awareness are essential components in making sure that secure gun storage laws work. Only one in three gun owners living in states with child access prevention laws know that their state requires secure storage of guns. To facilitate effective enforcement, state legislatures need to make sure their laws are precisely written to cover access by anyone under age 18 and are well known among gun owners. It is also crucial to collect data on and monitor the implementation of these laws to ensure that they are not enforced in a discriminatory manner toward over-policed communities or lead toward increased incarceration in communities.

Pass Extreme Risk Laws

As with most active shooter incidents in schools, there were warning signs prior to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Nearly 30 people knew about the shooter’s previous violent behavior, and law enforcement had been called to incidents involving the shooter on dozens of occasions. However, the shooter legally bought the gun he used, as he had never been convicted of a crime, and his mental health history did not legally prohibit him from buying or having guns. Accounts of the shooting show that law enforcement and the shooter’s family had no legal mechanism in the state of Florida to prevent the shooter’s easy access to guns.

To fill this critical gap in our laws, We recommend that states enact extreme risk laws. These laws create a legal process by which law enforcement, family members, and, in some states, educators can petition a court to temporarily prevent a person from having access to firearms when there is evidence that they are at serious risk of harming themselves or others, giving them the time they need to get help.

In cases where a student poses a threat, these orders can be used to prevent a student from buying a firearm even if otherwise they would legally be allowed to do so. These orders can also be used with minors, who may not be legally allowed to buy or have guns, but who may still have access to them at home.

Extreme Risk laws provide a civil procedure that gives key community members a way to intervene without going through the criminal court system. These Extreme Risk protection orders, sometimes also called red flag orders or gun violence restraining orders, can be issued only after a legal determination is made that a person poses a serious threat to themselves or others. They also contain strong due process protections to ensure that a person’s rights are balanced with public safety. Once an order is issued, a person is required to relinquish any guns they have and is prohibited from buying new guns temporarily, for a period generally lasting one year.

There is substantial evidence that these laws can prevent acts of violence in schools. In Maryland, leaders of the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association pointed to at least four cases where an Extreme Risk law was invoked involving “significant threats” against schools. In Florida, a Red Flag law passed in 2018 has been invoked in multiple cases of potential school violence, including one case of a student who was accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend and threatening to kill himself and another in which a potential school shooter said killing people would be “fun and addicting.” A study in California details 21 cases in which a gun violence restraining order, California’s name for an extreme risk protection order, was used in efforts to prevent mass shootings, including five instances where schools or children were targeted.

Because Extreme Risk laws are a proven tool with strong due process protections, they enjoy strong bipartisan support. Fourteen states, including Florida, as well as Washington, DC, have passed Extreme Risk laws since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018; five of them were signed by Republican governors. In all, 19 states and DC now have extreme gun laws on the books.

For states that have already enacted Extreme Risk laws, awareness among the public is a key component for their success. Currently, use of these laws varies enormously by state, as shown in this table. It’s that these states train law enforcement on the availability and use of these laws and that public awareness campaigns help to make knowledge of this option widely known. School officials also need to know that this tool is available to them as part of a comprehensive intervention with a student who is at serious risk to themselves or others. Overall, these laws are a commonsense method for acting on the warning signs too often found in active shooter incidents.

Raise the Age to Purchase Semi-Automatic Firearms

Despite the evidence that most active shooters are school-age and have a connection to the school, few states have stepped in to close gaps that allow minors to legally purchase high-powered firearms. States and the federal government should raise the minimum age to purchase or possess handguns and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns to 21 in order to prevent school-age shooters from easily obtaining firearms. Under federal law, in order to purchase a handgun from a licensed gun dealer, a person must be 21. Yet to purchase that same handgun in an unlicensed sale (online or from a private individual), or to purchase a rifle or shotgun from a licensed dealer, a person only has to be 18. Only a few states have acted to close these gaps. These deficiencies in the law leave an easy path for active shooters to obtain firearms. Because he was under 21, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter could not have gone into a gun store and bought a handgun, but he was able to legally buy the AR-15 assault-style rifle he used in the shooting. Following the shooting, Florida changed its law to raise the age to purchase all firearms to 21. Minimum-age laws can work in tandem with secure storage and Extreme Risk laws to cut off an easy way for shooters to obtain firearms.

Require Background Checks on All Gun Sales

Background checks are the key to enforcing US gun laws and are an effective tool for keeping guns out of the hands of people with dangerous histories. As part of a comprehensive plan to prevent gun violence in schools, states and the federal government act to pass laws that require background checks on all gun sales so that potential shooters cannot easily purchase firearms. Current federal law requires that background checks be conducted whenever a person attempts to purchase a firearm from a licensed gun dealer, to ensure that the prospective buyer is not legally prohibited from possessing guns. For example, when a person becomes subject to an extreme risk protection order, that record is entered into the federal background check database, and a background check at the point of sale prevents that person from buying a firearm at a gun store. However, current federal law does not require background checks on sales between unlicensed parties, including those at gun shows or online. As such, people with dangerous histories can easily circumvent the background check system simply by purchasing their firearm online or at a gun show. As many as one in nine people looking to buy a firearm on Armslist.com, the nation’s largest online gun marketplace, are people who cannot legally have firearms, including because they are under age 18. And the unlicensed sales marketplace is large: The same investigation found that 1.2 million online ads offering firearms for sale are listed annually that would not legally require a background check to be completed. Background checks are an important part of any school safety plan because they are our most comprehensive strategy to prevent minors, people subject to extreme risk protection orders, and other people who shouldn’t have guns from accessing them. Without background checks, guns are easily accessible in the online and gun show markets without any questions asked, making it difficult for law enforcement to detect violations of the law and undermining other strategies to keep guns out of the hands of shooters. Background checks are proven to reduce gun violence. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia already require a background check on all handgun sales. State laws requiring background checks for all handgun sales—by point-of-sale check and/or permit—are associated with lower firearm homicide rates, lower firearm suicide rates, and lower firearm trafficking. After Connecticut passed a law requiring background checks for a handgun purchase permit and at the point of sale, its firearm homicide rate decreased by 40 percent, and its firearm suicide rate decreased by 15 percent. Background checks reduce gun violence and are a crucial backbone for any school gun violence prevention strategy.