SCHOOL shootings are still new enough in the Philippines to shock us. The greater danger is that, in time, they may become familiar.
Two deadly incidents within two months briefly snatched national attention away from politics. There were expressions of outrage, official investigations and promises of stronger school security. But, as so often happens to headlines, it was only a matter of time before these stories, too, began to fade from public consciousness. The victims disappeared from the headlines. Yet the circumstances that allowed the violence to happen did not.
After the shootings, the Department of Education (DepEd) announced a nationwide drill for active attack incidents. The scheduled exercise was postponed due to bad weather forcing the cancellation of face-to-face classes. Even before that, however, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals had urged the DepEd to defer the activity. They warned that highly realistic simulations could traumatize children and that there was little evidence that such drills could actually prevent attacks or reduce casualties.
The question, then, is a fairly basic one: Are we preparing children to survive the next shooting, or are we doing enough to prevent the next one?
In the face of critical incidents, preparedness is necessary. School personnel should know how to communicate with police, hospitals, and parents. Buildings should be mapped for emergency responders. Teachers should understand when to evacuate, when to lock down, and how to protect students under their care. But preparedness should also be age-appropriate and trauma-informed. There is no need to expose children to simulated gunfire, masked attackers, fake blood or scenes of terror simply to teach them what to do in an emergency.
Drills, after all, are the last link in the chain. Prevention should begin much earlier.
We should also resist the temptation to explain school shootings simply as the work of mentally disturbed children. School violence is a complex community problem, and mental illness, by itself, is a poor predictor of violence. Careless generalizations might stigmatize millions of people with mental health conditions who are more likely to become victims than perpetrators.
Then there is a more practical question: How did troubled, angry or aggrieved adolescents get their hands on guns?
In the Tacloban shooting, the two suspects were only 14 and 15 years old. The firearms they allegedly carried to school reportedly came from the households of a police officer and a security agency employee. In the Zamboanga case, the pistol and rifle used by the student were reportedly registered to his father, a government official.
Those details deserve more attention than another round of speculation about what was happening inside a young person’s head. We should examine something far more tangible and preventable: access to weapons.
Bullying, grievance, social isolation and exposure to violent online material may create an explosive mixture. Social media can magnify humiliation, provide an audience, and encourage imitation. But none of these things pulls a trigger. A gun can turn adolescent rage, despair or fantasy into irreversible violence.
Other countries learned this lesson through tragedy. In 1996, a gunman killed 35 people and wounded many others at Port Arthur in Australia. The national government and the states responded with restrictions on automatic and certain semiautomatic firearms, strengthened licensing and registration, secure-storage rules, and a massive compulsory buyback.
Australia did not abolish legitimate gun ownership. Instead, it established a different principle: Owning a firearm is a regulated privilege, not an unfettered right, and it carries continuing responsibilities. Research has found that the reforms were followed by a sharp decline in mass shootings and firearm suicides.
Britain acted after another 1996 tragedy. A gunman entered Dunblane Primary School in Scotland and killed 16 children along with their teacher. In response, parliament prohibited most private handgun ownership in Great Britain, compensated lawful owners, and tightened an already strict licensing system.
Neither Britain nor Australia eliminated violence. What they did was make it harder for an unstable person with a gun to turn a violent impulse into a mass killing.
The contrast with the United States is instructive. One proposed American response to school shootings has been to arm teachers and train them to confront attackers. That is not a lesson we should import here. There is no reliable empirical evidence that arming teachers prevents shootings. It can also create new risks: accidental discharge, theft, a student gaining access to a weapon, or police mistaking an armed teacher for an attacker in the confusion of an emergency.
Teaching and close-quarter combat are entirely different professions. A short seminar at a firing range cannot substitute for the judgment, discipline and continuous training expected of professional tactical officers. Teachers should be taught to recognize distress, bullying, threats and dangerous behavioral changes — and to know when and where to seek help. They should not be turned into armed responders in classrooms filled with frightened children.
So, the immediate task is not to create armed schools. It is to account for the guns already among us.
Republic Act 10591 provides a comprehensive framework for licensing, registration, and regulation of firearms and ammunition. Yet loose and unlicensed firearms remain widespread. The government should enforce secure-storage requirements, particularly in homes with children. Firearms should be unloaded and locked, with ammunition stored separately. Adults who negligently allow minors to obtain firearms should face serious consequences.
There should also be a weapons-accountability audit covering police and military personnel, security guards and others with occupational access to firearms. Public authority must never become a private pipeline through which a child can obtain a weapon.
The decision allowing qualified civilians to own certain semiautomatic rifles also deserves reconsideration. Automatic and semiautomatic are not identical terms, and “assault weapon” is often used imprecisely. But the question is worth asking: does the civilian need for such weapons outweigh the public risk?
Schools, meanwhile, need multidisciplinary threat-assessment teams composed of educators, counselors, health professionals, child-protection officers and law enforcement representatives. Students should have a confidential way to report threats, weapons, severe bullying or alarming online behavior. Intervention has to come before a grievance becomes a plan — and before a plan finds a gun.
As the country recently marked National Heroes Day, we should also be careful about the kind of courage we ask of our children. We do not need to make heroes or martyrs out of them to save the rest of us from violence. Children should not be expected to confront gunmen, survive simulated massacres or sacrifice themselves so that adults can avoid making difficult decisions about firearms and school safety.
Our responsibility is not to teach children how to die bravely. It is to make sure they do not have to.
School shootings emerge from an intersection of personal crisis, family circumstances, bullying, online amplification, institutional neglect, and firearm access. No single measure will eliminate the threat. But a gun can give a moment of anger permanent consequences.
Britain and Australia responded to tragedy by reducing access and strengthening accountability. The United States has too often responded by putting more guns into the same dangerous environment.
Here in the Philippines, we should choose our lesson carefully. A school should not have to become an armed camp to be safe. The first line of defense is not a gun in a teacher’s drawer. It is keeping the gun out of the school — and, above all, out of the child’s hands.
