10 Ways To Prevent School Shootings

Long ago when my son was a high school student in Washington D.C., America's most racist city, he attended two different schools for two different reasons. When we first arrived he was entering 7th grade, and everyone told us he "had to go to private school because the public  schools are so bad." We found out later that what our bleeding-heart liberal friends really meant was that the public schools were so black

So we looked around and found a suitable private school he attended for the next three years. The Edmund Burke School had a lily-white student body and faculty and cost $17,000 a year for tuition, but we wanted the best education for our only child and thought that was how to get it. Too bad our son hated the place. So when it came to choosing a high school, we agreed to his request to attend "a real school that looked like the real world," with blacks, Hispanics and other ethnic groups represented. The public school, Woodrow Wilson Senior High, had a student body that was majority black and Hispanic, with Asian and white students making up a small minority.

Another difference between the two schools was that you could walk right in to Edmund Burke and go anywhere you wanted without being stopped by anyone. You could go upstairs or downstairs or wherever the heck you wanted, unseen by anyone since the front entrance wasn't even all that close to the school's office. It was a very different scene just two miles away at Wilson High. There was only one entrance, and the students had to line up and pass through a metal detector each morning. Once inside they were met by two armed policeman who searched all student backpacks.

Since this was years after the massacre at Columbine where 13 students died and many others injured permanently, I felt better about Wilson than Burke, despite the presence of the police and a security system being blatant signs of the underlying racism that pervaded the entire city. The rationale that all those minority students must be bringing guns and knives to school each day was hateful, especially since there was never any trouble in the three years my son attended Wilson, unless you count the swimming pool wall collapsing, but that's another story.

Since then I have watched countless school shootings unfold on TV, and am always stunned that none of the schools have followed Wilson High's example. Instead, all the politicians and protesters jabber  about gun control. Ha! The solution to school violence has nothing to do with changing our gun laws, but everything to do with changing our society. Following are a few suggestions, with my tongue only partly in my cheek:

1. First and foremost, every school in America must have only one entrance for students and teachers alike, at which there is posted an armed guard, a metal detector and whatever other security system is deemed necessary. (Obviously there can be many exit doors that stay locked from the inside.) Once that is in place, the following laws should be enacted as soon as possible:

2. Outlaw depression, especially in people under the age of 30.

3. Make every student equally popular and attractive.

4. Don't keep score at any school athletic events.

5. Have all students wear the same uniform, from kindergarten through high school.

6. Eliminate grades in all schools. Ditto awards of any kind for anything.

7. Force parents to take an interest in their children's lives. This means no child care and/or nannies. (If you have a kid you have to take care of it, otherwise don't have a kid.)

8. Make it mandatory to be at home when your child returns from school, starting in kindergarten and through high school graduation.

9. Outlaw the use of cell phones inside schools. If you use it, you lose it.

10. At home, keep legal guns locked away where nobody can get to them, certainly not a child.