One day after the latest horrific school shooting saw a 17-year-old student open fire on his peers and teachers in Santa Fe, Texas, killing nine students and a teacher, many people are once again calling for gun control and other measures to prevent mass shootings.
One rather unique suggestion came from Dan Patrick, the Lt. Governor of Texas (R). Immediately after the shooting, Patrick identified what he felt was the key problem with Texas’ some 8,000 school campuses: too many doors.
“There are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses. There aren’t enough people to put a guard at every entrance,” Patrick said during a press conference after the shooting yesterday.
He doubled down on his tough-on-doors stance late Friday in an interview on the Ingraham Angle program on Fox News.
“Maybe we need to look at designing schools the way we do big other infrastructure. Office buildings and courthouses and other areas where you can only go in and out one door. That may mean changing the way we think about school,” Patrick said.
Investigators tried to make sense Saturday of the motives of the shooter, identified as Dimitrious Pagourtzis, who despite 90-degree heat, carried out his deadly assault while wearing a trench coat. Beneath it, he had concealed his father’s shot gun, which he used to carry out the massacre.
Given the teen’s suspicious attire, “maybe a police officer would have seen him and stopped him if we had only one entrance and one exit to our schools,” Patrick said.
Patrick’s idea did not appear to get traction with many supporters, although some in the community of Santa Fe High School called again for arming teachers, a suggestion that almost invariably resurfaces after each such tragic shooting.
That it is being raised again probably isn’t terribly surprising given the fact Texas is one of America’s most gun-toting states, where firearms already are permitted on some college campuses.
Meanwhile some news outlets, including the New York Times, reported that the shooter’s ex-girlfriend was among his victims. This detail only further cemented a familiar narrative of this tragedy, which like so many other mass shootings has an alleged perpetrator, white, male, frustrated with society, possibly seeking revenge.
So while state legislatures debate door control, we’ll wait for them to notice the one thing all these mass shootings have in common, and it ain’t doors.