Anatomy of an American school shooting

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

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In 2000, I visited the quiet, conservative community of Moses Lake in Washington State (three hours drive across the stunning Cascade mountains from Seattle) for a radio documentary with my then BBC colleague Bill Law. The town became the backdrop for the first in the spate of school shootings which have blighted America over the past decade, when, in 1996, a troubled kid called Barry Loukaitis - wearing a black trenchcoat which concealed a hunting rifle and two handguns - walked into Frontier Junior High school and shot dead two 14-year old students and a teacher.

Loukaitis, who was also just 14 at the time, was disarmed by an astonishingly gutsy teacher, John Lane, and jailed for life without parole. We interviewed a brave and articulate girl called Natalie Heinz, who was 13 at the time of the shooting. Loukaitis shot her through the back. The bullet exited her right breast and then went through her arm. She only just survived.

What was so memorable and poignant about the encounter was that, despite her daughter's terrible ordeal, Natalie's mum, Shannon, refused to blame lax gun controls and the ready availability of weapons. "Do you blame [the availability of] guns ?" I asked her. "No, we don't blame guns whatsoever [sic]," she replied firmly. "We're gun-owners ourselves. The gun doesn't have a brain, it can't move itself anywhere. Someone has to use the gun for destruction. So it's the person who did this that we blame, not the gun." Natalie interjected at that point. "You can make gun-laws as strict as you want, but there are still ways. If you want to get hold of a gun [and kill], you can."

For me that exchange captured perfectly why America's estimated 200 million guns in private hands will never be surrendered. Guns, especially in vast swathes of rural America, are a fact - and a way - of life. Anyone who thinks the grotesque Virginia Tech massacre will act as a wake-up call and spark changes in the law is sorely mistaken. When the intelligent and reasonable mother of a school shooting victim defends the right to own guns, it tells you all you need to know...

Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, April 17, 2007

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