Dutch newspaper blog: "Serious shooting incidents at school can be prevented"

[Euromutt]

This appeared in the education blog of the Dutch NRC Handelsblad (http://weblogs.nrc.nl/onderwijsblog/2009/11/26/ernstige-schietincidenten-op-school-zijn-te-voorkomen/)

What follows is my own translation for the benefit of non-Dutch-speaking readers (hopefully, posting a translation of a foreign-language article doesn't violate the forum rules).

Serious shooting incidents at school can be prevented

A student who inflicts a bloodbath at school; there isn't even a word for it in Dutch. "School shootings," such as those in the United States (Columbine, 1999) and Gemrany (Erfurt, 2002) have not occurred in the Netherlands. Not yet, says Jaap Timmer, lecturer in Safety and Cohesion at the Hogeschool Windesheim. "And we'd like to keep it that way." At a symposium yesterday representatives from education, police and youth care met to hear how to prevent such an incident. Preferably without turning the school into an "impregnable fortress."

Three incidents over the past ten years most closely resemble school shootings. In Veghel (1999) a 17 year-old student wounded five people at Regional Education Center "de Leijgraaf." In 2004 at the Terra College in The Hague, vice-principal Hans van Wieren was stabbed to death. And three years ago at a school in Hoogerheide the 8 year-old Jesse Dingemans was stabbed to death.

According to Micheal Hoppe, policy advisor on Safety at the ministry of education, such serious incidents cannot be categorized as school shootings, or to use the term he prefers, "amok." Hoppe doubts that amok can be prevented. "Technical measures have in any case proven to be ineffective."

Fantasy world

That school shootings have not occurred in the Netherlands is a matter of luck, says Frank Robertz, director of the Institute for Violence Prevention and Applied Criminology in Berlin. In Germany, 14 school shootings have taken place, resulting in a total of 84 dead and hundreds of wounded, Robertz says. This year alone there were htree in Germany. "I see no reason why the number should decline in 2010."

He doesn't like the term "amok." "This violence did not spring into being suddenly in the perpetrators. It has been prepared for weeks, even months. These boys murder in cold blood." He apeared frustrated yesterday. "It is definitely possible to recognize a prospective perpetrator, as long as you recognize the signals. Those are 'red flags'," as Robertz calls them, which the perpetrator displays during his preparations. "It is orchestrated, they write in diaries or on blogs, they make allusions. They think that deviant behavior is normal."

We're dealing with self-contained incidents, usually involving one boy with a weapon. This boy often feels misunderstood and isolated, lives in a fantasy world. It's the boy who sits in the back row, makes violent drawings or pitch black stories larded with violence. We're dealing with shooting ncidents, though there is a new "trend" to be discerned, involving the use of molotov cocktails, and thus fire.

"We're dealing with a combination of elements," says Robertz. "A student who writes violent stories is not necessarily planning anything, if he's embedded in a strong social network."

Red flags

Sometimes these red flags are picked up on. The parents of a 13 year-old student in the small northern French town of Beauvrais phoned the police Tuesday a week ago when they noticed their son had left for school with a shotgun and 25 cartridges. On his blog they'd read he intended to kill a number of teachers and himself: "This is the last day of my life." The boy was arrested.
Very occasionally, a student is arrested for possession of a weapon, such as in Alphen aan de Rijn in 2004. In the Netherlands near-incidents have been intercepted by police--students or former students who share their plans on the internet--but both the police and the schools prefer not to publicize these.

The danger of mimicking behavior by imitators and copycats has been proven, Robertz says. After a bloodbath in 2002 in Erfurt, more incidents followed in Germany. And that is not a coincidence. "These children are narcissists. They want to draw attention." Media scrutiny is one way to get that attention. Which means that the media have a task to fullfil, Robertz emphasizes. They should report an incident like this in as neutral a tone as possible, just as in reporting suicides. "With no details of clothing, musical preference or other information through which a youth can identify with the perpetrator."

Drawings

Robertz immediately adds that reticence on the media's part doesn't work on the internet, which is next to impossible to control. The perpetrators of bloodbaths in the U.S., Germany and, more recently, Finland, have fans on the internet. There is a ranking site on which scores are kept of who has inflicted the most casualties at an educational institution.

Parents, care institutions and school must pursue these red flags, says Robertz. Children must be taught more "internet smarts." And what they should not do is treat school shootings as a distinct topic, because that, too, can have undesirable side-effects. So what should they do? "Talk with them, gather information about the fantasy world. And if you see violent drawings or read a violent story, talk to them about it. Violence is not acceptable, and you should let them know that. The key is to strengthen the children's social skills," Robertz concludes, "and then they can solve their own problems."

I thought this piece was interesting because it provides a perspective that indiscriminate violent rampages in schools are considered a very real threat even in western Europe, despite the gun laws being a lot more stringent than those in the U.S. Note moreover that the participants in this symposium seem to have focused more on the causes rather than the means of these rampages, presumably taking it as read that as long as there is a will, a way will be found, and even if restricting certain means might limit the number of casualties, it will not eliminate the phenomenon (as indicated by the comment about the increasing use of molotov cocktails).

I think there are a number of recommendations regarding the way the media, schools and parents should handle these violent rampages that we would do well to take on board.

[Turbineguy]

1. I can see some serious problems

for the way we deal with these in the US. The media's delight in sensational overcoverage and our abhorrence to looking at the causes and preventing them.

[cowcommander]

2. " focused more on the causes rather than the means of these rampages"

lol, you have way too much faith in people. It's easier to appeal to emotion than to reason here in the U.S.

[GreenStormCloud]

3. This is a phenomenon of the modern world.

Guns were freely available in earlier times. Prior to 1964 one could order guns by mail. I remember the guns section of the Sears catalogue. And guns were cheap too. There were no age restrictions. I often bought ammunition for my shotgun as early as eleven years old.

Definately it isn't the tool, but the user.

[geckosfeet]

4. As you point out, the social causes of mass killings/shootings need to be

discovered and eradicated. But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that some form of regulation or gun control is part of the solution.

[eqfan592]

6. We have a ton of regulation and gun control already.

Do you have an idea of what form of added regulation will help prevent school shootings? Or is this more of a "gut feeling?"

[Euromutt]

10. I think you missed a rather important point to this article

Namely that gun control laws are significantly more stringent in countries like Germany than they are in the U.S. These places make Massachusetts look permissive. And yet, Germany has seen no fewer than 14 indiscriminate violent rampages, and experts reckon it's mainly luck that none have happened yet in the Netherlands. Moreover, as the observation about use of molotov cocktails indicates, school "shooters" aren't stopped by not having firearms available; unless you're prepared to advocate outlawing possession of gasoline, motor oil, glass bottles and cotton rags, a school "shooter" will find some means of inflicting carnage.

Gun control doesn't address the cause, and once you do address the cause, gun control becomes superfluous.

[cowcommander]

5. Good times

I wish I was born earlier... :-(

[metalbot]

7. I'm looking at the Sten and thinking...

...that the tax stamp is more than 6 times the cost of the gun! Today the same gun would be about $6k, and the tax stamp would be 3% of the price.

[high_and_mighty]

11. 9mm ammo prices haven't gone up that much from then

I remember around the time I turned 21 (2005/2006) you could get 50 rounds of blazer aluminum for $5.50/50 rounds at Academy Sports. I have to say thats pretty amazing. Looks pretty similar for the 7mm Mauser then compared to 7.62x39 in the 90s and early 00s.

[AtheistCrusader]

13. That's just mean.

Don't do that.

[PavePusher]

14. I'm crying. And not just on the insdie...

Trapdoor Springfields for under $50.... whimper....

[G. L. Herter]

15. Nice collection, cowcommander.

With a not-too-hard-to-get C&R FFL, a person can still get firearms delivered to one's door. Not new ones; they have to be 50 or more years old or be on a "collectibles" list assembled by our friends at the BATFE, but still, it's kind of a thrill to have UPS deliver a pistol. Both my CZ-82s (from the mid-1980's) arrived in just that way.

Another advantage to the license is that one can buy such firearms from a gunstore without having to fill out any paperwork.

[taurus145]

16. I once bought a Mauser by mail for $8.00

from an ad in a comic book.

Still have it. Still shoot it. Never hurt anyone with it, umless you count the time I accidentally set it on the dog's tail.

Got ,y first Ruger .22 semi-auto pistol for $49.95.

[spin]

8. K&R (n/t)

[SteveM]

9. Good post. I've tried speculating on the phenomenon of mass shootings...

and am still puzzled by such. There seems to be a true form of alienation which goes on, whether or not someone is constantly on-line, a game-nut or sequestered in a log cabin with an AM radio. There also seems to be a "loss" of what it means to be an American, or, if the world-wide nature of these killings is any indication, anyone. In this country, the two most universal values seem to be (1) the accumulation of stuff (as opposed to the rather recent demise of making money), and (2) acquiring celebrity. If the first becomes difficult or unfulfilling, there will be an ever-increasing reliance on acquisition of celebrity. Since mass-killings have become a way to celebrity (like the more prolific and filmed car-chases), they may be relied upon by a few to achieve celebrity.

The term "amok" was used by M. Gandhi to describe a hypothetical mass-murderer's actions. Gandhi said such a person running amok should be stopped by exercising either the highest order of pacifism (thwarting the murderer without bringing harm to the killer, even if this brings harm to the pacifist), or by using the next highest order of pacifism ("despatching" the murderer). Either was acceptable when compared to the lowest order: doing nothing and standing aside; Gandhi called this last order of action "cowardice."

ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS, passim. A compilation of Gandhi's writings.

[AtheistCrusader]

12. It's a cultural thing, that's for sure.

And it's got nothing to do with the presence of firearms in society.

It's got a lot more to do with how much respect we show one another, and what regard we have for the lives of other people.