Debates over security in American schools have returned to the fore after a school shooting in Nashville on Monday that took the lives of seven people.
Three children and three adults were slain before the shooter was killed by police officers, according to updates from the Metro Nashville Police Department.
The incident occurred at The Covenant School, a private Christian school at Covenant Presbyterian Church.
Police identified the shooter as Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old biological female from Nashville who reportedly identified as male. Hale was armed with two rifles and a handgun.
A Vanderbilt University Medical Center spokesperson reportedly said three children were taken to the hospital having suffered gunshot wounds. All three were pronounced dead after arrival.
Police said the shooter entered the school through a side door on the first floor. Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hale was a former student of The Covenant School, per NBC 5 DFW.
Nashville police spokesperson Don Aaron said, per the Tennessee Lookout, that the private school had neither security cameras nor an onsite resource officer despite the security precautions taken by other schools as school shootings have been publicized around the country.
In the media scrum yesterday afternoon, the police chief answered a question about whether other schools were targeted, noting that “there was another location that was mentioned [by the shooter] but because of a threat assessment by the suspect that … too much security they decided not to.”
In the wake of this and other school shootings, many are questioning why schools and political leaders refuse to increase the presence of armed security in schools to protect students.
“Biden and the Democrats send $ 100’s of billions of dollars and send guns to Ukraine to defend them from bad guys with guns,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday. “Why won’t Biden and the Democrats spend money and support legislation to defend our own innocent American school children with good guys with guns?”
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said after the Uvalde massacre, “We know from past experiences that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus.”
“Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it. You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” claimed Cruz. “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton suggested allowing teachers to carry firearms for additional security following the Uvalde tragedy.
“We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,” Paxton told Fox News. “We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. … That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”
Declared Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy questioned why the U.S. seems to protect everything but schools.
“We protect green pieces of paper in a bank with more armed guards than we do our kids in schools. We pay for Thousands Standing Around (TSA) in our airports. There’s more security at a random mall than in a public school,” Ramaswamy pointed out.
However, others maintain that spending on armed security is not an appropriate way to prevent school shootings.
“These security measures are not effective,” argued Dr. Jagdish Khubchandani, professor of public health at New Mexico State University. “And they are not catching up to the ease of access with which people are acquiring guns in the pandemic.”
Dr. Khubchandani published a study in 2019 indicating that increased security measures in schools had not led to a decrease in gun violence in schools. The study claimed that blocking potential shooters from access to a firearm in the first place is a more effective strategy.
Another study from 2021 concluded that armed officers in schools “do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools but do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents.”
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association determined there is “no association between having an armed officer and deterrence of violence,” adding that “armed guards were not associated with significant reduction in rates of injuries” during school shootings.
In Texas, a mandatory “random intruder detection audit” conducted by the Texas School Safety Center (TxSSC) found that 5% of the 2,864 schools audited were vulnerable to unauthorized access.
As reported by The Dallas Express, a local charter school in DeSoto has partnered with a Texas-based technology company to implement a new school security technology that uses artificial intelligence to detect firearms.
Last week, a shooting occurred at a Dallas ISD campus in which a student was shot in the arm in the parking lot mere minutes after classes were dismissed.
This incident occurred the day after two students were shot, with one killed, at a high school in Arlington.