brainM.D. is a family physician who practices telemedicine, father of four sons, and former middle school and high school teacher. He lives in Poway.
In January, San Diego police stopped a mass shooting at my son’s high school, Rancho Bernardo High School. His student and his father were arrested after the student told other students he was planning to shoot up at school. Police removed unregistered firearms, explosives, rocket-propelled grenades, and equipment used to make ghost guns (do-it-yourself weapons that do not require serial numbers or background checks) such as rifles and handguns from the family’s home.
Panic gripped not only my home, but many others in Poway, Rancho Bernardo, and nearby communities. We are all concerned about school safety and want the Poway Unified School District to do more to protect our children.
Poway has already seen one mass shooting at Chabad in Poway on April 27, 2019, when 19-year-old John, a Mount Carmel High School graduate and Cal State San Marcos nursing student, was killed. -Timothy Earnest fired with an AR-15 style rifle. . Parents and students in Poway, Rancho Bernardo and nearby areas are calling for more steps to be taken to prevent future mass shootings.
Every day in the United States, an average of 12 children die from gun violence, and another 32 are shot and injured. Since 2020, firearms have surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of injury-related deaths among American children and adolescents (ages 1 to 19). The number of gun-related deaths (homicides, suicides, and accidents) in the United States in 2021 was 48,830, an 8% increase from 2021 and a new peak. Seven percent of all U.S. children (4.6 million people) live in a home with at least one loaded and unlocked gun, and 42 percent of U.S. households own at least one firearm. It is estimated that there are.
The United States has the highest number of school shootings in the world. Motivations for school shootings include depression, revenge, and bullying. Targeting K-12 schools, according to a 2019 report by the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, which analyzed 41 incidents of school violence that occurred in K-12 schools from 2008 to 2017. Most of the attackers had been bullied, and in some cases, the bullying had been persistent. Bullying can be perpetrated by other students, parents, teachers, administrators, or the superintendent. All bullying must stop!
Preventing gun violence and school shootings requires active intervention by parents, children, teachers, administrators, school boards, law enforcement, and community and political leaders. This includes establishing threat assessment programs, enforcing existing firearms laws, providing crisis intervention, drug and mental health treatment, recognizing risks of crime and violence, and encouraging the reporting of concerning behaviors. San Diego County promotes gun violence, including promoting suicide prevention, programs targeting intimate partner violence, providing free gun locks, providing youth mentoring and after-school programs, and partnering with trauma hospitals and community-based programs. It has just announced a violence reduction program.
The Second Amendment protects the “right to keep and bear arms,” ​​but federal law prohibits the possession of firearms by persons “determined to be mentally defective” or “committed to a psychiatric hospital.” Possession of is prohibited. The Gun Control Act of 1968 and subsequent amendments prohibit people convicted of felonies and those subject to domestic violence protection orders from possessing firearms. Parents who allow children with mental health problems to use firearms could be punished. The mother of a teenage boy who killed four students in a mass shooting at an Oxford, Michigan, high school was found guilty of manslaughter in February. She faces up to 15 years in prison for giving her 15-year-old son a gun and “failing to get her son appropriate mental health treatment despite warning signs.” may be punished.
We can prevent gun violence by requiring mental health evaluations of students and adults who exhibit risk factors (bullying, drug use, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, depression). But as any pediatrician will tell you, children are not small adults. “To solve this complex problem, it is important that adults with fully developed brains understand the minds and nervous systems of young people,” says clinical psychologist Eric Mendoza.
Bystander reporting is an important strategy to prevent school shootings. Safely storing firearms can prevent school shootings, suicides, and the deaths of family members and friends. Store your firearm unloaded in a lockbox, separate from ammunition, disable your firearm with a firearm safety, and place your firearm in a location where others cannot see it.
The Poway Unified School District does a great job with several school safety interventions such as the “See Something” and “Say Something” programs. The anonymous PUSD Tip Line (1-844-PUSD-TIP) will be printed on the back of all secondary student ID cards and QR codes posted throughout the school.
Areas for improvement include addressing the fact that the PUSD Tipline is not appropriate for reporting less urgent issues such as depression, antisocial behavior, and other less obvious risk factors . Anonymous phone lines for each school’s area must be posted at the top of the school’s website, in the school ID, and posted in all classrooms and throughout the school. Must be monitored 24/7, and 100 percent of comments should mandate an immediate meeting with students, parents, school counselors, and principals to review issues and interventions. Mental health evaluations and school follow-up should be mandatory. School site and district safety committees should meet more frequently and have the authority to make immediate improvements.
