The shooting on May 25, 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX has again shocked the nation. It has also brought out the usual divisions on firearms safety. I personally come down on the side of groups like Moms Demand Action or Giffords.org, promoting universal background checks, stringent red flag laws, magazine size restrictions, and aggressive enforcement against gun trafficking.
There is also springing up a debate over physical security and law enforcement response, given what appear to be glaring failures in Uvalde despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on physical security measures and having a trained and equipped SWAT unit in the local police department.
After the shooting at Columbine HS in Colorado in 1999, physical security of school facilities became a focus of design and construction of new school facilities. Measures to "harden" schools include:
- Single-point controlled access, to include electronic locks and video or physical surveillance and card access control for entry to the building
- Armed school resource officers, whose duties include the typical "security guard" routines to check for unlocked doors
- Perimeter security, including perimeter video surveillance and controlled access to the parking lots and grounds during school hours
- Hardening interior doors, especially doors to classrooms
Columbine also brought forward scrutiny of law enforcement tactics in response to an active shooter on campus. Many police departments formed active shooter response teams, and coordinated with schools to conduct active shooter drills.
All that seems to have been for naught at Robb Elementary this week. The shooter killed his grandmother at her house (shades of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Connecticut), and then wrecked his car near the school and opened fire at a funeral home across the street from the school (per 9-1-1 calls). Response to those 9-1-1 calls appears to have been slow. The shooter then apparently entered the school through an unlocked door, despite the school having spent lots of money to implement some of the hardening measures described above.
Several minutes later, police responded to the school. But they failed to carry out any kind of tactical response, despite their own SWAT unit. Instead, law enforcement entered the school about 40 minutes later, upon arrival of backup from Federal officers, including Border Patrol officers.
The questions about the law enforcement response and hardening measures at the school must be answered. But we cannot allow that to distract from addressing the ocean of firearms that floods our nation.
And a note about our two high schools in Haywood County, NC. Tuscola and Pisgah High Schools are designed around the "Florida plan," which means the schools have several separate buildings separated by covered walkways. There is no single point of entry to the school building, because each campus has six or seven separate school buildings. That is a physical security nightmare.
