The Answer to Reducing School Shootings: ‘Severe Action’

Someone down at The Trace or CNN or MSNBC is writing the same lying article as last time right now, where they define normal criminal activity as a “mass shooting,” they make people think that school spree shootings are happening daily, they kite those people into sharing those articles on Facebook, and they maniacally rake in piles of click-pennies on their way to moral and financial bankruptcy while increasing the chances of a future spree shooter by 30%. The First Amendment prevents us from stopping them from doing it, but perhaps we can leverage their moral decay into a part of the solution. Hear me out.

In Uvalde, the cops jerked each other off for an hour, only went in after some border patrol guys showed up and instructed them on how to properly stack up, and went in to discover a bunch of kids who’d bled out over the past hour while the cops ate donuts and prevented parents from rescuing their kids on their own.

In Nashville, the cops were there in a matter of minutes, stacked up within ten, started room clearing, plugged the shooter two minutes after entering, and released the body cam footage of the lead rifle guy in the stack the same day to thunderous applause on Instagram. 

Nashville was a textbook example of doing everything right, Uvalde everything wrong, both in terms of on the ground procedure and in media management. Plugging the shooter in an embarrassing way and releasing the footage immediately disincentivized future shooters instead of incentivizing them. “Severe action” to adjust the incentives of the spree shooting machine might look something like this, if I were President of the United States:

1. 1. Get on a C-130 in combat fatigues and fly to Joint Base San Antonio where I meet a dozen Marines, hop on a Black Hawk, land in Uvalde Police Chief Pete Arredondo’s front yard, drag him out into the grass, and beat the shit out of him in front of his wife and kids, while having one of the Marines film it for World Star Hip Hop (if that’s still a thing),
   2. After he’s bloody on the ground, drop my trousers and piss on his head, taking a selfie while doing so,
   3. Post that to Twitter with a caption that says “Feeling Frisky, OMW to self-pardon”
   4. Send Police Chief John Drake, officer Rex Engelbert, and officer Michael Collazo of the Nashville police department congressional medals of honor on the C-130 ride back to DC.

That action, without need for Executive Order or other government procedure, would put every police chief on notice to get their ducks in a row regarding response times for school spree shooters. It would put them on notice because the click hungry media vultures would talk about it for weeks, which in turn would disincentivize the potential next crop of shooters as well. It might not eliminate school spree shootings, but that 30% media bump might instead turn into a 30% reduction in shooters, which would be nice. Even Uvalde Police Chief Arredondo can sleep well knowing he was responsible for saving some children in his pile of presidential urine. 

Combine this with “define as terrorism, treat as terrorism” and “maybe start figuring out what the nuts is going on with teen suicide,” and you’ve got about the most effective plan you can have, based on all the available research, data, and realities on the ground. 

So if you want to bitch about the “thoughts and prayers” crowd, don’t direct that bitching my way. I just gave you three options. Pick one.

— BJ Campbell in The School Shooting Solution