Is every school’s violent threat the same?

We live in a time of uncertainty due to the ongoing gun violence. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been over 468 mass shootings in the United States in 2022. Ten years have gone since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting killed twenty innocent children between the ages of six and seven. Ten years have passed after we promised ourselves that we would not allow this to happen again. However, earlier this year, another mass shooting occurred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, killing nineteen more innocent children. Since then, the level of anxiety and fear has been rising exponentially across our nation, causing us to be in a hypervigilant mode. This behavior is almost as if we are waiting for the worst to happen.

Immediately after the Uvalde shooting happened, we were overwhelmed with news reports of school shooting threats occurring across our community, and many schools even went on preventive lockdowns. Many of us thought being out of school for the summer was the perfect recipe to calm the heightened anxiety level and freshly restart school. However, with the recent start of school classes, we have seen an increase in the reports of school shooting threats, putting our community in a hypervigilant state again.

It is relevant that, as a community, we understand the importance of being attentive to potential warning signs for school violence. We know most school shooters leaked some information about their intentions or plans, but this information was ignored, and individuals did not think about making a report. Many of us believe part of the problem is that we have not been educated in what are some of these warning signs and our role in reporting potential suspicious behaviors.

As easy as it sounds, it is a bit more confusing when we think about where we draw the line to decide if a behavior is a threat or perhaps a reportable warning sign. While sharing with a friend the importance of reporting “red flags,” she suddenly became quiet and, after a few seconds, said: “I guess I should have reported this girl that studies with my daughter, who posted a picture with a toy gun on Snapchat last year.” Yes, I said if you believe she was posing a threat to the school or anyone else with her post. The role of the individual is not to determine the risk level of a threat but to report it. Once a report is made, experts perform a thorough threat assessment that determines the risk level. We are the first line of defense in a preventive measure framework, which seems to be the most proactive means of improving schools’ safety.

For those of us that receive and evaluate threat reports, including counselors, teachers, health care providers, and law enforcement, it is imperative to understand that not every threat is the same. We must realize that a thorough evaluation should be done to determine the risk level of each threat. In the case of the ten-year-old girl who posted a Snapchat picture with a toy gun, we should ask questions such as did she make any direct threat towards someone or somewhere in her post? Do you believe she poses a threat to the school or anyone? Does she have access to guns? Were there any specific details or plans in her danger? Is it a plausible threat? does she have any intention of carrying out violent behavior? Does she have a history of prior violent behaviors and low frustration tolerance? Has she had a decline in her functionality and academic performance?

As you can see, there is much more to analyze than just the initial behavior of posting a picture. In this case, it is a ten-year-old girl with no previous history of violent behaviors, no access to weapons, and who appears immature for her developmental age. She indicated her post with the gun came from the understanding that it was “cool” and denied any intentions or plans of hurting anyone; she possesses a low risk to the school and the community.
Furthermore, when we analyze the threat on its own, posting a picture with a toy gun on social media does not necessarily imply a threat. If it were a threat, it would be considered an indirect threat that lacks any specific details, and it is not plausible as a toy gun has no power to cause physical harm. In this case, it is essential for the ten-year-old girl to receive some counseling and guidance on the possible consequences of posting images on social media that can be associated with violence and mental health services if needed.

We have been bombarded with school shooting threats recently, but fortunately for us, most of these threats have been low risk and do not present an imminent risk to our community. We need to continue educating our community on the importance of understanding warning signs of potential school violence and the individual role of reporting. Most of our recent school shooting threats have been treated by involving law enforcement without a proper threat assessment done beforehand. This process has caused many children to be detained in juvenile detention centers with charges of terroristic threats, despite having threats that were either very low in risk or posed no risk at all. We need to start primary prevention intervention models to reinforce reporting of suspicious behaviors and educate first responders in making adequate threat assessments. This primary prevention method would let us know that not every school violence threat is the same.