Appalachian School of Law
In seconds Odighizuwa had killed the school dean, a professor and one student. Three other students were shot as well, one in the chest, one in the stomach and one in the throat.
Many students heard the shots. Two who did were Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges. Mikael was outside the school having just returned to campus from lunch when he heard the shots. Tracy was inside attending class. Both immediately ran to their cars. Each had a handgun locked in the vehicle.James Eaves-Johnson wrote about this fact one week later in The Daily Iowan. He wrote: “A Lexus-Nexis search revealed 88 stories on the topic, of which only two mentioned that either Bridges or Gross was armed.” This 2002 article noted “This was a very public shooting with a lot of media coverage.” But the media left out information showing how two students with firearms ended the killing spree.
Pearl High School
Luke Woodham was a troubled teen. He felt no one really liked him. In 1997 he murdered his mother and put on a trench coat. He filled the pockets with ammunition and took a handgun to the Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi. In rapid succession killed two students and wounded seven others.
What Woodham hadn’t planned for was the actions of Assistant Principal Joel Myrick. Myrick heard the gun shots. He couldn’t have a handgun in the school. But he did keep one locked in his vehicle in the parking lot. He ran outside and retrieved the gun.
As Myrick headed back toward the school Woodham was in his vehicle headed for his next intended target. Myrick aimed his gun at the shooter. The teen crashed his car when he saw the gun. Myrick approached the car and held a gun to the killer who surrendered immediately. There would be no further victims that day, thanks to armed resistance.
Edinboro, PA
Many people probably forgot about the shooting in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. It was a school graduation dance that Andrew Wurst entered to take out his anger on the school. First he shot teacher John Gillette outside. He started shooting randomly inside the restaurant where the 240 students had gathered.
It was restaurant owner James Strand, armed with a shot gun, who captured the shooter and held him for police.
Trolley Square Shopping Mall, SLC
The mall was a self-declared “gun free zone” forbidding patrons from carrying weapons. He wasn’t worried. In fact he appreciated knowing that his victims couldn’t defend themselves.
He opened fire even before he got inside killing his first victims immediately outside the front door. As he walked down the mall hallway he fired in all directions. Several more people were shot inside a card store immediately inside the mall. The shooter moved on to the Pottery Barns Kids store.
What he didn’t know is that one patron of the mall, Kenneth Hammond, had ignored the signs informing patrons they must be unarmed to enter. He was a police officer but he was not on duty and he was not a police officer for Salt Lake City. By all standards he was a civilian that day and probably should have left his firearm in his vehicle.
It’s a good thing he didn’t. He was sitting in the mall with his wife having dinner when he heard the shots. He told her to hide and to call 911 emergency services. He went to confront the gunman. The killer found himself under gun fire much sooner than he anticipated. From this point on all his effort was to protect himself from Hammond, he had no time to kill anyone else. Hammond was able to pin down the shooter until police finally arrived and one of them shot the man to death.
Virginia Tech
The Virginia Tech massacre was a textbook example of the failure of government. The killer was a deranged individual. People who dealt with him were terrified of him. He was reported to campus police several times. Professors reported him, students reported him, and the government bureaucrats who run the school said there was nothing they could do. They were stifled by regulations and rules at every turn.
They couldn’t tell the parents of the killer, that would violate regulations on privacy. They basically couldn’t do very much. The killer was sent to a mental institution by a judge. But the school had to let him back on campus, regulations you know. Regulations did exist to forbid firearms on campus. That disarmed the victims not the killer. Lot of good that did.
Santana High School (
CNN.com - Suspect had talked about shooting at school - March 5, 2001)
Student John Schardt said the freshman boy arrested in the shooting was smiling when he allegedly emerged from a restroom in the school's social sciences building with a gun. (see video)
"He was looking around, smiling, with his weapon. He fired two more shots and went back in," Schardt said. He said authorities with guns drawn arrested the suspect in the bathroom.
"He had an evil kind of sadistic demeanor to him," Schardt said.
Authorities said the alleged gunman reloaded his .22-caliber revolver at least once.
Robert Clark was a parent, he was at the school, with his wife, to register his daughter for attendance when the shooting happened. He was also an off-duty police officer who was carrying a weapon. Jim Fotis, of Law Enforcement Alliance of America says that Clark: “courageously acted to save lives by confronting the armed killer, ordering him to surrender and preventing him from killing or harming countless others.”
Not Sure
Shawn Clark was an off-duty police officer when he was went to deliver some milk to a day care center. He expects children but finds a knife-wielding felon inside the building. Sure it wasn’t a shooting but a criminal with a knife can still kill a lot of kids in a very short time. Clark and the man fought, Clark shot him twice, still the man fled the scene but was apprehended soon after.
Utah guns in schools
Like many states, Utah enacted a concealed-handgun licensing law in 1995. Unlike most states, Utah did not make schools an exclusion zone for lawful carrying. Not only a teacher on duty, but also a parent coming to pick up a child from school, can lawfully carry a concealed handgun in a Utah school building — after, of course, passing a background check and safety training. (See Utah Code sect. 76-10-505.5. In 2003, the legislature expanded the law, by allowing principals to authorize firearms possession by individuals who did not have a concealed-handgun carry permit.)
After eleven years of experience in Utah, we now have exactly zero reported problems of concealed handgun licensees misusing guns at school, or students stealing guns from teachers, or teachers using their licensed firearms to shoot or threaten students. During this same period, we also have had exactly zero mass murders in Utah schools.