The best thing I've ever read on REALLY stopping school shootings (and a lot more)

[nolabear]

Their topline message: Don't harden schools. Make them softer, by improving social and emotional health.

"If we're really talking about prevention, my perspective is that we should go for the public health approach," says Ron Avi Astor at the University of Southern California, who also helped draft the plan.

A public health approach to disease means, instead of waiting for people to be rushed to emergency rooms with heart attacks or the flu, you go into the community: with vaccinations, screenings, fruits and vegetables, walking trails and exercise coaches. You screen and regulate environmental hazards, like a nearby polluting factory. You keep watch on reported cases of illness, to stop a new outbreak in its tracks.

A public health approach to school shootings, Astor explains, would be much along the same lines.



https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/07/590877717/experts-say-here-s-how-to-prevent-the-next-school-shooting?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180307

[Wounded Bear]

1. Some decent public health policies would fix a LOT of shit going on...

including the violence inside and outside of schools and on the street.

"Public health" includes real psychological and mental health treatments, of course.

[nolabear]

2. I hate that America doesn't want to try this hard to help its people.

This would take a lot of effort. And it would be effort well made. We just have to put it in. We SO want things to just happen without working our butts off for them.

[handmade34]

3. K&R n/t

[qwlauren35]

4. It sounds like Threat Assessment Doesn't Work

The article says that it's not fool-proof and that a threat assessment was done on Cruz a year before he shot up the school.

I have always contended that a culture change is needed to make a difference, and this may help, but I don't think it goes far enough. We have to make guns as bad as cigarettes. Something that is UN cool. We have to stop glorifying them with video games. We have to make shooting people unfathomably WRONG. And it's going to be hard, because we have war, and war is about guns.

So, it's a quandary. Maybe this is a piece of the solution, but given that the threat assessment didn't work, it will take much more.

Confiscating guns of anyone who threatens to shoot students should be allowable by law.

[nolabear]

5. I think those are good additions. Changing the culture is paramount.