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Back to School Safety: Weapons at School
Carrying weapons to school has become an acceptable risk for many students, both those who
are fearful and those who intend to exploit others. Underlying the reasons students bring weapons
to school may be the societal attitude that violence is an effective way to deal with problems.
Television and movies depict violence as an effective problem-solving technique used by "good
guys" and "bad guys" alike. Regardless of whether weapons are used in an act of aggression or as
a defense against another's aggression, the reason weapons are brought to school often is related
to the proliferation of gangs and drug activity on or near many school campuses.
A weapon is any instrument used with intent to inflict physical or mental harm on another person.
Although school officials are concerned with all weapons, knives, guns, and explosive devices
present the greatest threat to school safety. Weapons have been found and used on school
campuses nationwide. Of the 3,370 high school students surveyed in the 1996 Twenty-Seventh
Annual Survey of High Achievers, 29 percent reported that they knew someone who had brought
a weapon to school, and 17 percent claimed it was not very difficult to obtain weapons at
school.20 When looking at the prevalence of gun possession in particular, the 1995 School Crime
Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey found that 12.7 percent of student
respondents knew someone who brought a gun to school.21 According to the same study, the
percentage of students reporting this increased as their age increased (see figure 1).
A periodic survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported
that nearly 12 percent of the polled students in grades 9 through 12 carried a weapon on school
property during the 30 days preceding the survey, and 7.3 percent were threatened or injured with
a weapon on school property during the 12 months preceding the survey.22 In a study measuring
school-associated violent deaths from 1992-1994, 77 percent of the deaths were due to firearms
(see table 1).23
Startlingly, the cost of a death due to a single 22-cent, 9-millimeter bullet has been documented as
including the following expenses: juvenile hall and jail costs for 1 year for four suspects, $85,710;
a 2-week trial, $61,000; crime scene investigation, $13,438; medical treatment, $4,950; autopsy,
$2,804; and State incarceration costs if the four suspects are convicted and serve 20 years,
$1,796,625 -- for a grand total of $1,964,527.24 Extrapolated costs in terms of lives cut short
and loved ones' grief, lost potential and productivity, and resulting damage to the Nation's psyche
and society are inestimable, but nonetheless real.
Examples of strategies being implemented to prevent or intervene in the use of weapons in schools include:
- Passage of State and local gun-free school zones legislation.
- Passage of the Gun-Free Schools Act in 1994, which states that students be expelled if found with a weapon at school.
- Public awareness campaigns, such as a Boston billboard nearly the length of a football
field depicting the faces of children and other victims of gun violence, "the largest of 200
signs erected in the state to remind people of the costs of handgun violence."25
- Public service gifts and donations, such as the 350 free In a Flash videos and teaching
aids designed to show the "lethal and injurious effects of gun violence" donated by the
nonprofit National Emergency Medicine Association to public, private, and special
education schools in the Baltimore area.26
- Hotlines, such as the one at George Washington High School in San Francisco,27 used for
the anonymous reporting of weapons, drug use and possession, bullying, harassment, and
other school-associated violence and crime.
- Emphasis on "telling is not tattling" word-of-mouth campaigns to encourage students to
break their informal code of silence and to report weapons and other instances of campus
crime and violence that threaten safety.
- Use of handheld or permanent weapons detectors.
- Use of see-through book bags to prevent weapons concealment.
- Removal or permanent locking of hall lockers to prevent weapons concealment and to
discourage loitering in hallways.
- Standardized incident-reporting forms for documenting all instances of school violence and
crime, and requirement that schools report to police when a weapon is found in school.
- Implementation of a school resource officer program, such as Community Policing Within
Schools in the Robeson County School Outreach Program, which places sworn officers in
targeted high schools.28
- Partnerships with community agencies that enhance school resources and activities, such
as coordinating campus security with local law enforcement agencies; orchestrating
presentations from local fire and police departments regarding ways students and school
personnel can assist in responding to school safety crises; and involving county mental
health, child protective services, and juvenile probation agencies in identifying and
monitoring potentially dangerous or law-violating students.
Endnotes
20. Educational Communications, Inc., November 13, 1996.
21. K.A. Chandler, C.D. Chapman, M.R. Rand, and B.M. Taylor, Students' Reports of School
Crime: 1989 and 1995, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational
Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics, and U.S. Department of
Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998, p.11. NCJ 169607.
22. L. Kann et al., 1995.
23. S.P. Kachur, G.M. Stennies, K.E. Powell, W. Modzeleski, R.S. Stephens, R. Murphy, M.
Kresnow, D. Sleet, and R. Lowry, "School-associated violent deaths in the United States,
1992-1994," Journal of the American Medical Association 275(22):1729-1733, 1996.
24. R. De La Cruz, "Path of a bullet, we all pay the price," Long Beach Press Telegram (November 10):K-1, 1996.
25. D.L. Ryan, "The face of violence," Education Week (November 15):4, 1995.
26. E.F. Imhoff, "Group offers free video on impact of gun violence," Baltimore Sun (January 21) 1997.
27. J.S. Dierke, "Principal's hotline reduces school crime," School Safety, Westlake Village, CA:
National School Safety Center (Winter):11, 1996.
28. North Carolina Governor's Crime Commission, "Community policing within schools," School
Safety, Westlake Village, CA: National School Safety Center (Fall): 7-9, 1995.
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Copyright © Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse, and Authors Susan P. Limber and Maury M. Nation. Reprinted with permission. Visit STOP Sex Offenders for more child safety information!
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