The Safe Library - Service, Safety, & Security with Dr. Steve Albrecht

[A shorter version of this essay ran as an op-ed in the February 2, 2024 online edition of The Seattle Times. Click here for the link to that version. https://shorturl.at/txFKW. See also "U.S. Department of Education Issues New Resource for School Administrators on Importance of Safe Firearm Storage" - Campus Safety]

I have spent the past 32 years of my life and career trying to keep people safe from violence in the workplace, in our K-12 schools, colleges, and universities; in healthcare facilities; and in city and county government agencies that serve taxpayers (including libraries and utilities). I have worked diligently to educate public and private sector employees about the real dangers of domestic violence, especially when it crosses over from home to work. 

I have interviewed three workplace violence murderers in prison, something no other author I know of has done. Their primary motive for what they did (killing a total of 12 people) was simple: they wanted revenge. We can limit that possibility based on how we treat people, as co-workers, employees, students, ratepayers, patients, and people receiving services from organizations. That’s why so many of my library security workshops talk about the real value of empathy, patience, and listening skills, even when the other person isn’t cooperating very much.

I have trained dozens of K-12 school districts and hundreds of school employees in school violence prevention approaches, including helping with the creation of District-wide Threat Assessment Teams (TATs).

If I had just one wish, where I could snap my fingers and make it happen instantly to prevent school shootings, it would not be about anti-bullying campaigns (which range in success from a lot to not at all); or more School Resource Officers (hard to do today with such low staffing in law enforcement agencies); or better physical security at our schools (the locked, staffed “closed campus” model works best, especially as students enter and leave). No, those aren’t my primary concerns.

If I could make it happen, I would demand that every single parent who has a kid at a K-12 school and who owns a gun in their home stores it safely. 

Even a quick review of the over 344 school shootings in 2023 (a stunning number, as collected by the K-12 School Shootings Database at https://k12ssdb.org) paints the terrible picture clearly: The majority of K-12 school shooting perpetrators under the age of 18 get the guns they use from their homes.

As a library security consultant and trainer since 2000, I’m reminded of the Clovis, NM library shooting on August 28, 2017, that took the lives of two female library employees and wounded four others, including a 10-year-old boy. The shooter, 16-year-old Nathan Jouett, had originally intended to go to Clovis High School where he had been bullied, to shoot students there. He went into the library first, to use the bathroom, then came out and shot six people. He got the gun from home, from his father’s unlocked gun safe. (Yes, I put those words in bold for emphasis.) 

I researched the Jouett case extensively, talking with the plaintiff’s lawyer who sued the young man’s therapist and father for negligence, reviewing the court transcripts, reading the depositions of the court-appointed child psychiatrist, and even Jouett’s prison deposition. The ease with which he acquired the gun and ammunition is stunning.

Guns in a gun shop are expensive and only available to people over a certain age, and in some states, after a background check. Many homes (too many homes) have unsecured handguns, rifles, and shotguns, sitting in closets, clothing drawers, nightstands, desks, and boxes in garages. Too many parents (most often the men) mistakenly believe, “My kid knows not to go into my sock drawer and open that box marked `Glock’.” 

This is foolish, wishful thinking, proven tragically wrong when that kid gets an unsecured handgun, rifle, or shotgun from his or her own home and takes it to school, either with murderous intent or to scare away the students who have bullied him or her.

Think that can’t happen with a pre-teen? From a January 6, 2023 NBC News online story: “The 6-year-old boy who seriously wounded his teacher at a Virginia elementary school in January said in the aftermath that `I did it’ and `I got my mom's gun last night,’ according to newly unsealed court documents.” (https://tinyurl.com/ykr8sske)

In the aftermath of these tragedies, the parents are “in shock” as to what happened and why it did, and “saddened and surprised” that their own child used a gun from their home to commit these acts. “We thought they were locked up and that he or she didn’t have access. We never thought that in a million years this could ever happen…” The excuses are just that - excuses for failing to be vigilant, every single day that they own and store one or more firearms in their homes. 

So how can local libraries and even more so - school libraries - help stop this? By committing to a national campaign, in partnership with their nearby school districts, to put parents on notice that they have a legal, moral, and ethical duty to safely lock up every firearm type in their homes. And equally important, to give parents easy, inexpensive, and readily available safe gun storage solutions.

Posters at the school and campus-wide announcements aren’t enough. This effort will require our K-12 school districts to bring parents together, through on-campus meetings and even Zoom sessions, to educate them firmly and directly, that they must store their firearms.

Trigger locks (usually a cable with a key lock) are cheap to buy and easy to distribute to parents. How about asking the local gun safe vendors in our communities to provide reduced-rate gun safes (after getting a good-faith discount from their manufacturers)? You don’t need to buy a 600-pound gun safe, when a lockable gun box will do. Can we ask local gun shops and gun ranges to agree to provide as many free or inexpensive gun storage solutions as they can, as part of a gesture of goodwill to the entire community? 

How about asking our local law enforcement agencies to partner with our schools, school libraries, and city or county libraries to speak on campus and at specific library programs about this issue? “Attention Parents! Here is the problem: kids are stealing guns from home to use in shootings, often at their schools or in the streets, and often against other children. Your child could be a victim and if you don’t secure your firearms, your child may decide to be the shooter. Here are some free solutions you can get at the library, at the school district office, or your child’s school campus, right now, today: trigger locks, small gun safes, and lockable gun boxes. Please go home and protect your firearms, your children, our schools, and our communities.”

After three decades of trying to solve workplace violence and school violence problems, I’m weary from my efforts, which sometimes feel in vain. It’s time to ask our local libraries, school libraries, school districts, and local law enforcement agencies to come together and offer real, physical solutions that stop this issue of too-easy gun access in its tracks.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it so well, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.” 

Kids are getting unsecured guns from their homes to use to shoot others and themselves. The solution is upstream but it’s not too far away to make it happen.