Fortified schools don't save lives

Teen gunman Salvador Ramos entered a back door of the Robb Elementary School by evading a district officer. He charged into two connected fourth-grade classrooms and barricaded himself by locking the door. He then proceeded to kill 19 children and two teachers inside.

For years, school districts have bolstered their security measures to prevent such tragedies from occurring. But the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 suggests that even the most comprehensive safety plans at schools cannot stop a potential shooter from getting access to campus.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District has a 21-point security protocol in place that includes its own security force, threat-assessment teams, motion detectors, perimeter fencing, security cameras and a system to report bullying and threats, among others. It also has a strict locked-door policy that requires teachers to "keep their classroom doors closed and locked at all times".

The Border Control agents who killed the gunman had trouble breaching the locked classroom door and had to get a staff member to open the door with a key, The Associated Press reported.

The money that the school district spent on security and monitoring services increased from around $200,000 in 2017 to around $435,000 for the current school year, according to the school district's budget documents.

In addition, the school district received a $69,000 state grant in 2020 for fortifying security. It was part of the $100 million safety grant allocated in the wake of a shooting at Santa Fe High School in 2018.

But there's only so much that school districts can do without effective gun regulations, experts said.

Most public schools in the US have implemented safety measures recommended by public officials, according to Jagdish Khubchandani, a professor of public health at New Mexico State University who studies school security practices.

"These security measures are not effective," Khubchandani told The New York Times. After looking at 18 years of school security practices, he found that none of the current methods show they actually reduce gun violence.

Schools are creating "a false sense of security" when they adopt these ineffective prevention measures, he said in a 2019 paper written with James Price from the University of Toledo.

"A false sense of security is a dangerous environment that is currently being propelled by mass media, interest groups, and policymakers," the researchers noted.

Under federal law, a person has to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a licensed gun dealer. However, he or she only needs to be 18 to purchase the same weapon in an unlicensed sale, or to buy a rifle or shotgun from a licensed dealer.

Deficiencies in laws

Those deficiencies in laws make it easy for active shooters to obtain guns. Even though he was under 21 at the time, the shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida was still able to legally buy the AR-15 assault-style rifle he used in the shooting.

Nearly 4.6 million US children live in homes with at least one gun that is loaded and unlocked, according to a 2015 national survey.

In 2019, 13 percent of students from grades 9-12 said they had carried a weapon during the previous 30 days, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics. Three percent of the students said they had brought them onto school property.

"It is unfathomable that our leaders have not taken the steps necessary to intervene and help those with patterns of violent behavior and to block their easy access to guns," according to a 2020 report by Everytown Research& Policy.

Another focus in recent decades has been on enhanced mental health support and anti-bullying efforts to prevent school shootings.

Ramos struggled with family dysfunction and was reportedly bullied in school. But he had no criminal history or mental health history that would have identified him as a potential threat.

When US President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled on Sunday to Uvalde to meet with families of the victims and survivors of the massacre, they received a blunt message. "Do something!" rang out shouts from a crowd in the street as Biden left a church where he attended mass with mourning relatives.

"We will. We will," Biden responded to the crowd, before heading to private meetings with relatives of the dead and with first responders.

The US Department of Justice announced on Sunday that it "will conduct a Critical Incident Review of the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Uvalde".

Agencies and Xinhua contributed to this story.