Commentary: Is a Weapons-Screening Strategy for Public Schools Good Public Policy?

As Professor Ronald V. Clarke of the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice points out, it is easier to prevent a crime by making the crime target inaccessible than to change the motivation of the potential offender. Thus, locks on steering columns reduce auto thefts, and burglar alarms reduce household burglaries. This is what Professor Clarke calls "situational crime prevention," and he has shown in many studies that it works (Clarke 1997). A situational crime prevention strategy is essentially the basis for hopes to prevent a recurrence of terrorist attacks on airliners. But is this strategy appropriate for "preventing lethal violence in schools" (Mawson et al.)? Can "entry-based weapons-screening" cope with the problem of school violence effectively?

I have doubts that it can. School violence has certainly become a problem in American public schools, especially secondary schools, but the violence is mostly nonlethal and a humdrum extension of adolescent aggressiveness: a shakedown in the boys' toilet or an enemy punched (Toby 1998). I call it "everyday school violence" to distinguish it from an irrational massacre like the one that took place in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Irrational lethal violence in schools is very rare—and motivated quite differently from the everyday violence that is the bane of inner-city schools (Toby 2001). Everyday school violence can turn lethal, but weapons screening cannot easily prevent such an outcome; a great many objects found in schools for legitimate purposes can be used aggressively, as happened in the following case:

At the high school of suburban Surrattsville, Maryland, on January 23, 1986, eighteen-year-old Eric Hawk, a popular student planning to attend college that fall, was waiting in the school parking lot to board his bus at the end of the day. Another 18-year-old student, John Rideout, who had quarreled with Eric on other occasions, challenged him to a fight, and, while Eric was removing his coat, stabbed him in the head with a screwdriver that John had stolen earlier in the day from the art room. Eric went into convulsions and died almost immediately, causing consternation at Surrattsville High School; fights do not ordinarily result in severe injuries, much less a death. (Toby 1995a)

In short, the line between lethal weapons and nonlethal tools or eating utensils is not as clear as one might think. This problem is the same one that airport and aircraft security personnel have to deal with. Banning knives poses problems for passengers who may require them to cut their meat. But in the wake of the 11 September terrorist capture of four airliners, passengers now accept inconveniences aboard aircraft; a ban on useful utensils seems a small price for added safety from hijackers. On the other hand, school shops, laboratories, and cafeterias cannot operate in the future in any way like they have in the past if similar bans were put in place. That being so, students, staff members of schools, and elected boards of education are reluctant to accept great inconvenience and expense in order to obtain marginally better safety. After all, schools are essentially a fairly safe environment. Very few homicides occur in the nation's 20,000 secondary schools and 60,000 elementary schools, most of them public schools. Victimization statistics gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice show that young people are at far greater risk of lethal violence outside of schools than inside of schools (Kaufman et al. 2001). We don't want to use a meat ax to kill a spider.

A further complication is that some school violence, including lethal violence, takes place in areas around the school, in school buses, or on the streets used by students coming to or going from school rather than in school buildings. One explanation for guns and knives that students carry in...