Disarming a school shooter: Officers or Office Staff?

Who can listen to the 911 phone call of Antoinette Tuff, who can listen to the muffled voice of Michael Hill, the school shooter, without feeling as if they are witnessing some strange miracle? 

As schools open around the country at the dawn of this academic year, we are already faced with our greatest fear: the vulnerability of our children.  In the past we have answered the issue of school shootings with solutions involving more locked doors, more security cameras, more metal detectors, and more armed officers in schools. But Wednesday’s attack gives us pause…because none of those things were what brought down the gunman. 

As a teacher, I have sat through countless trainings related to our, “School Crisis and Emergency Management Plan.” Not surprisingly, I’ve never sat through a training that would have prepared me to respond to Michael Hill the way that Antoinette Tuff was able to do:

She listened: “What do you want me to tell them?”

She remained calm. “It’s going to be all right.”

She made herself vulnerable. “I tried to commit suicide.”

She advocated.  “He says he’s sorry.”

She looked for solutions. “I’ll go out there with you.”

She showed compassion. “We all go through something in life.”  “I just want you to know I love you, though, Ok?”

This was not a woman trained to subdue a gunman, but she disarmed him none the less.

In her interview with Anderson Cooper, she gave credit to training from a higher power. Prayers to help her get through her own hard times. Meditations on her own vulnerability and hurt.

The literal translation of the word “compassion” is to suffer with. It is an impulse that seems illogical. It is counter to military and police training which seeks strategies, weapons, and body armor that makes us completely invulnerable to attack. Instead, compassion tells us that our greatest power arises when we share in the suffering of a fellow human being. When we make ourselves vulnerable we give others permission to admit the same.

Dehumanization is easiest when you can’t see the other person, when you don’t have to look them in the eye, when you don’t know the back story that brought them to this present moment.  We don’t know much yet about Michael Hill, but the most important thing we know are the confessions Antoinette was able to gently draw out of him: he was off his medication, on probation, and wanted to die.  Most importantly, she got him to confess that he was sorry and didn’t want to hurt the children.

We will never know how many countless school shootings have been prevented by compassionate people like Antoinette Tuff. Teachers who helped a student channel their isolation into a creative space. Counselors who diagnosed and sought help for a youth with mental illness. Peers who instead of bullying an already isolated student invited them to sit with them at lunch.

With as many firearms as we have in our country, it’s not a shock that these incidents occur; it’s a shock we haven’t had more of them. And if we are not going to crack down on guns, we need to step up our cultivation of the best defense against their improper use: gatekeepers like Antoinette Tuff who help humanize both the perpetrators and the potential victims of violence.