Simple solution

There are many sides to most issues, often obscured by emotional response or a short-view simplistic solution.  Arguments made along party lines are often poorly-informed.  Thoughtless blaming and accusing can contribute to subsequent confusion.

There are indeed positions held on an issue which might be considered conservative.  Or liberal.  Or progressive or socialist or capitalist or pro-life or pro-rights or ....  Such labels are of little help, we've noticed, because it's just the goal that matters, not the party.

School shootings and school violence top the

media list today.  Discussions of gun control,

rights of ownership, and arming teachers are

 the perhaps simplest response, but they don't
 address either the cause or a
 truly viable solution.

Why would a student go to school to kill?  

Attacks in schools by students go back to the 1800s in the U.S., and are often related to events at the school. Within that context, we see students choosing violence when faced with rejection, conflict, or their own failure, things they perhaps don't know how to deal with otherwise.  It sometimes can be traced to escalating frustration, perhaps a life-skill development shortfall over years.

Columbine wasn't first, but it has been a model studied by perpetrators here and elsewhere in the world.  Do we know why?  In some measure, we do.  Can security measures at school solve the problem.  Unlikely.  Nor will an assault weapons ban or background checks bring about any fundamental change in heart and mind of those planning violence.

Causes, as reported -- there's bullying or having been bullied, being harshly and perhaps publicly reproved by a teacher/principal, being ostracised by a social group, academic failure, loneliness, conflict, failed romance, frustration with personal life and home circumstances ....

Beyond the simplistic solutions offered, there is much to understand about who we are and how things have changed in the recent decades.

For what specifically do we equip our children?  Ideally, we'll redirect them to personal strength and away from violence.  They'll perhaps be faced with circumstances like these:

• school culture may or may not be an extension of family and community; real life is usually quite different.
• not every school culture is harsh, but segments of many are.
• not every teacher/administrator is thoughtfully engaged every hour of every day, but many are or nearly so.
• not every neighborhood supports student aspirations, but many do.
• not every household is calm, but most are functional.
• not every parent is unaware or uninvolved, though many are limited by multiple jobs and partner absence.
• not every student is equally vulnerable to distress, 
• and not every crisis has the same solution. 

And, while laws are necessary, none of the causal elements are addressable by legislation.  None.

Required in the larger discussion -- personal, family, and community values, national principles; all must be considered, and law isn't going to solve the problem no matter how much we'd like to legislate something simple and move on. 
Leadership, however, ....
_____________________________________

Update 4 MAR 18 - here's one senator's approach via a bipartisan study group for policy changes that might help.  Written like a politician perhaps, but it contains a preliminary set of goals for the discussion as it moves progressively deeper.  Thoughts?  Missing pieces?  What are the chances of meaningful change?
 

School safety is a top priority on a daily basis--in every classroom in Maryland. Over the last week I've been working with a small bi-partisan group to develop a comprehensive, multi-faceted action plan that addresses the issue. 

This plan has overwhelming bi-partisan support; will be drafted into a 4-tier legislative package with each tier then including specific solutions to issues in each of the following categories:

          Prevention, Anticipation, Deterrence, Protection.

Providing additional support to our communities by tightening background check procedures, establishing threat assessment teams in schools, adding more sworn, trained police to serve as on-site resource officers, and last line of defense safe refuges in classrooms are just a few of the changes this legislation will mandate. Keeping our kids safe--along with teachers and faculty--is the true goal. This legislation not only addresses today; it also includes a system of checks and balances that requires periodic review of safety procedures at each individual school. ... 

We are deliberately staying away from 'solutions' that will never pass or cause polarizing partisan fights. I don't want headlines or press releases - I want to fix the problem. 
_________________________________________________________________

Problems -- Impediments to understanding include how such incidents are categorized and reported by various agencies. State agency perspectives vary widely.
_________________________________________________________________

Gun control -- after 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, gun control advocates say they have momentum to enact new state laws. But in the years since the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, more state laws have actually expanded access to guns.

From a recent article in Huffington Post ...

"In the years since Sandy Hook, when 26 were slain in 2012, states have enacted nearly 600 new gun laws, according to data compiled separately by the National Rifle Association and the Giffords Law Center to Reduce Gun Violence. Nearly two-thirds of those were backed by the NRA. It is “indisputably true” that there have been far more new laws that loosen gun restrictions than tighten them, said Michael Hammond, the legislative counsel at Gun Owners of America, a Virginia-based “no compromise” gun lobbying organization. The way a state reacts to mass shootings depends on who controls its legislature, he said. And in the case of the states that expanded access to firearms, most were controlled by Republicans.

“If you are in favor of the Second Amendment, grow up with guns, are comfortable with guns, don’t want to see kids turned into sitting ducks, you’re more likely to say the solution is more guns,” Hammond said."

______________________________________________________________

From Jay Bazzinotti on Quora, 17 FEB:
The “main culprit” that seems to be the cause of school shootings is the cruelness of life combined with very easy access to guns. Throughout history we have made school itself a punishment where students long for snow days and see as drudgery the sudden rigid schedules. They are separated from seeing the inherent benefits of schooling: the social aspect, the education; the learning; the use of time; the opportunity for extra-curricular activities. They are unable to find reasonable ways to express their dissatisfaction with their environment, with discipline, with work, with their changing bodies and romantic entanglements they cannot understand or seem to make work. They seek control and something like “freedom”. School is like prison to many students. The easy access to guns, the unrealistic portrayal of shootings in movies and TV with their lack of gore, their lack of remorse or grief and their apparent magical ability to provide control and easy answers to nearly every problem makes shootings more attractive. We try to control shootings more now by building prison-like schools with more metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs in the hallways, with bulletproof classroom doors made of diamond plate and TV cameras in every hall but all we do is push the problem somewhere else - to shootings in churches and theaters and stadiums. There are 140,000 schools in the United States, every one of them a potential target, a soft target.

______________________________________________________________
Apart from law, what role does leadership play in this issue?