by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

They saw the warning signs, and ignored them. Now, friends and acquaintances of another youth charged in connection with a school shooting incident will have to live with their inaction.

Firearms rights leaders across the nation have uniformly noted that the March 5 tragedy in Santee, CA, a San Diego suburb, might have been averted, had those who were tipped by 15-year-old accused killer Charles Andrew Williams notified authorities.

Using a .22-caliber, eight-shot revolver belonging to his father, Williams allegedly shot and killed students Randy Gordon, 17, and Bryan Zuckor, 14. He wounded 13 others, including 11 other students, a security guard and a student teacher, before surrendering to police.

Noted Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right To Keep and Bear Arms:

“Friends or family members who had prior knowledge, or even a suspicion that this might happen, that a crime might be imminent, should be haunted by their failure to act.”

Added Bill Powers, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, “I think this…sort of tragedy, which apparently could have been prevented like some of the other tragedies we’ve seen, goes far deeper than something that can be addressed by some sort of political (response). It becomes particularly disturbing when—after the fact—we find people talking about the warning signs.”

Within hours of the Santana High School shooting, two of the accused gunman’s classmates and one adult were telling reporters that Williams had been talking about shooting up the school for at least two days prior to the incident. Most prominent of them was 29-year-old Chris Reynolds, the boyfriend of one of Williams’ friends.

Lt. Ron Van Raaphorst of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department told Gun Week that a search of the residence where Williams lived with his father turned up eight other firearms, all described as “long guns.” He said the youth has been cooperating during interrogation.

But Gottlieb suggested that the Santee incident is “just more evidence” of a pattern that emerges following such tragedies. All too frequently, as in the cases of school gunmen in Moses Lake, WA, Springfield, OR, Littleton, CO, and now the San Diego suburb, the shooters are subsequently described by peers as having been “outsiders” and subjected to hazing and other forms of ridicule or ostracism by their classmates. And, when the shooters have provided ample warnings of their impending acts, either nobody paid attention, or the authorities did little or nothing as a result.

Columbine High School gunmen Dylan Klebold and Kevin Harris were directly linked to a violent video production that detailed their fantasy about shooting “jocks” at the school. They had posted messages of hate and violence on the Internet, using a site directed at school athletes and others, and Harris even had had previous problems with police.

Springfield gunman Kip Kinkel, who had been under the care of a mental health professional and prescribed psychotropic drugs, had been arrested for having a gun at school the day before he gunned down several classmates. He was released to his father’s custody, hours before he subsequently killed both of his parents, booby-trapped his house, then returned to the school to unleash a hail of gunfire.

Gottlieb, in a statement released to the media, insisted that harsh punishment of young killers would send a hard message to would-be copycats.

“Imagine going to prison as a youth, being there when your classmates graduate from college, still being there when they become parents, and still being there when their grandchildren are born, and they have long ago forgotten you even exist,” Gottlieb observed. “That’s a powerful message for kids to think about.”

He said making individuals responsible for their heinous crimes, no matter what their age, would serve as a “reality check” for would-be killers.

“How can moms anywhere in America feel safe about sending their children to school unless horribly misguided young criminals are made to suffer the full consequences of their actions, in a way that sends a message to others,” Gottlieb questioned.

“This was no spontaneous act of desperation,” he emphasized. “This is clearly a case of pre-meditated, calculated, cold-blooded murder. It appears that one individual was responsible, and that lone individual should be held accountable.”

More Laws No Answer
At the same time, he and other leaders in the gun rights movement said new gun law proposals are not the answer.

Neal Knox, a prominent fixture in the firearms community for over 40 years, noted in a news column following the Santee shooting that nobody can blame the so-called easy availability of guns for the Santana High School rampage.

“Guns have been made less available every year for over three decades,” Knox wrote.

NRA’s Powers added, “I think the national media are coming to the obvious conclusion that there’s a lot more going on with these troubled kids than can be addressed by some sort of political debate.”

Perhaps Gottlieb summed it up best, noting, “Law-abiding gunowners should not be punished for this vicious crime, especially in California, a state with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. If this terrible incident proves anything about California’s gun laws, it would be that they don’t work. Millions of honest Californians have been subjected to a series of increasingly Draconian restrictions on their firearms civil rights, and guess what? Not one of those laws prevented this tragedy.”

Intervention Works
Gun rights advocates have several recent incidents to bolster their position that intervention works. One incident that made national headlines unfolded in Cupertino, CA, where De Anza Community College student Al Joseph Deguzman was arrested within hours of a planned shooting rampage on the campus. He had posed for photographs showing him with guns and pipe bombs, and when he had the film developed, an alert staffer at the photo lab—who also attended the college—alerted police.

The Columbine massacre inspired at least five other students at schools in two different states to plan their own massacres. Three students at a school in Kansas were arrested in February after an anonymous tip led police to the trio, who had bomb-making materials and a rifle, a map of their school, and white supremacist literature. Two other students at a school in Fort Collins, CO, were nabbed in January as they were planning an assault on their school on the second anniversary of the Columbine tragedy.

Boulder, CO, police in mid-February began investigating an Internet chat room after Fairview High School officials discovered a message reading, “All Fairview jocks will die Columbine-style.”

A Reno, NV, student was arrested in February when police suspected he was planning what might have been a non-lethal attack at his former high school. The only guns seized were pellet guns, although police also reportedly found a mock newspaper report that depicted his attack, and his subsequent death at the hands of police.
East Coast Cases

In New York state, police arrested an 18-year-old student at a high school in Elmira. The youth was armed with a .22-caliber pistol and sawed-off shotgun, and had several pipe bombs in a gym bag.

Also in New York state, an eighth-grader was suspended for two days after publishing a “hit list” of students on his website.

One day later in New Jersey, an eight-grade student was suspended after a librarian discovered a hit list containing the names of 16 other students that the girl had written down.

And a February case in Florida might best underscore what Gottlieb said about intervention and “making an example” in relation to school violence. The Orange County School Board recently fired a teacher’s aide after she failed to report to school authorities that a kindergarten student had a loaded 9mm Beretta pistol in his possession. That gun was traced to an Orange County deputy sheriff, who had lost it when his home was burglarized in 1996.