Utah model to prevent school shootings

As the gun-control debate rages on after the Uvalde school shooting incident, almost everyone forgets one State that does not have mass school shootings. That State is Utah, whose laws allow concealed handgun permit holders to carry their handguns into school.

Utah concealed handgun permit law

Utah has relatively simple laws saying who may, or may not, carry guns into a school (or anywhere else). Those who do not have a concealed handgun permit (CHP), may not carry weapons into a school, college, or university. But CHP holders may carry their weapons anywhere, including into schools. The only places where CHP holders may not carry their handguns, are “federal and state restricted areas.” Those places have so far proved easy to control, with metal detectors, X ray scanners, and so on. Any worship leader, private householder, or private school administration may post gun-free notices, but security is their responsibility. In addition:

the [Utah] State Board of Regents may authorize a higher education institution to:

Allow dormitory residents to request only roommates who are not licensed to carry a concealed firearm; or

Ensure enforcement of rules pertaining to private hearing rooms that have been designated as “secure areas”, meaning that there are restrictions on the transportation of firearms and ammunition into the hearing rooms.

Such things come under the heading of securing an area – and accepting responsibility for such security.

Furthermore, teachers with CHPs need not tell anyone that they’re carrying, nor may their school districts ask.

Not all Utah teachers are happy about it. President Trump, in 2018, suggested firearms training for teachers. Some called that “absurd.” But others enthusiastically received Trump’s remarks. One specifically took such training after the Sandy Hook shooting in New London, Connecticut.

Mass shootings do not happen in Utah schools!

Naturally people, including some of those Utah teachers, ask whether any of their schools could be next. But anyone who cared to check the records, would get a profound shock. Not one single event that could qualify as a mass shooting has ever happened in a Utah school. John R. Lott defines a mass shooting as a shooting incident with four or more deaths not including the shooter.

One expects Wikipedia, with the dominance by the left of its user base and editorial board, to have the most complete list of mass shootings in Utah or anywhere else. Wikipedia lists only five mass shootings anywhere in Utah in the last two centuries. This includes the Prisoner of War Massacre in 1945, in which an American private, without authorization, shot and killed nine German POWs and wounded nineteen more. More to the point, none of these incidents happened anywhere near a school.

Aside from that, Wikipedia keeps lists of school shootings throughout the United States in the twenty-first century and centuries past. Of all the incidents Wikipedia lists, seven happened in Utah.

Total killings in all those seven incidents: one – the perpetrator. He was in a disciplinary hearing after a girl accused him of sexual harassment.

Total woundings in all those seven incidents: seven. Three of the woundings happened at the hand of the one perpetrator who died – at the hand of one of those he wounded.

Accidents will happen

Furthermore, these seven incidents include two accidents. One teacher’s gun went off in the bathroom. Her leg took metal and porcelain shrapnel. Another teacher let six boys shoot off their guns in an assembly without checking to see that the guns had blank loads. (They had live rounds.) The other incidents (aside from the discipline hearing that went wrong) involved arguments or histrionics. Considering the stakes, those incidents ended better than one would normally expect.

But again, school and police records do not show the kind of mass shooting like the one in Uvalde, Texas. Such things don’t happen in Utah because they can’t. No one, bent on mass murder, who walks into a school in Utah, can be sure of having helpless targets.

Those decrying the “terrible Texas gun laws” have it wrong. The problem is not that guns are easy to get. It is that everyone in a typical school is unarmed. (The school district in Uvalde had one armed “resource officer” to cover many schools. Of course, this officer was not at Robb Elementary School when Salvador Ramos walked in and started blasting away.) If every State adopted the Utah model, mass school shootings would stop.