The Parkland shooting has created a momentum in the conversation around gun and school safety reform that hadn't really existed after previous shootings. The students held rallies, addressed lawmakers, created social media personalities, and lots of people followed the cause. 17 of their classmates and teachers had just died, it was time to do something.
The Florida legislature is in the process of passing some reform: a combination of raising the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21, 3-day waiting periods for all rifles, and $400M for mental health and school resources. The resources can include a variety of defensive measures like bulletproof glass, metal detectors, etc. All this sounds pretty good from a reform perspective, right? There was one other nugget in there, and it's a point that has also gained a lot of traction: putting guns in schools. In the Florida legislation, it would mean allowing "trained" teachers to carry guns unless their school opted into a marshal program. I hadn't seen the details of the latter, but presumably it's essentially putting a full-time, uniformed police officer in the school. Around 30% of the approximately 100,000 schools in America have such a School Resource Officer.
Is this a good idea? There are numerous lines of reasoning. One says that our children's safety is paramount, and adding a trained, qualified, armed person to their safety net is a win. Another says the SROs can lead to some unintended consequences, for example unruly children might end up with criminal charges instead of detention. There's particular concern the latter will apply for minority students. I have an entirely different concern: finite resource optimization.
We have a limited amount of funds to do all the things we'd like to do. This is true of individual budgets, state budgets, school budgets, all budgets (even federal, though they have a bit more leeway to take on debt). The goal of the SRO is noble: to save children's lives. No one contends this is a desirable outcome. However, we need to consider the cost-benefit not because we are putting a dollar amount on a life, but because we want our finite resources to protect the most lives. To compare one approach to another, we have to quantify the cost and the benefit: how many lives are saved for how many dollars, and can we deploy those dollars in a more effective way.
An SRO is a police officer. Salaries will vary, but the cost to support an officer should be at least $75k per year between salary, training, equipment, etc, amounting to around $7-10B per year if deployed to every school in the nation. Let us also suppose, optimistically, the tactic is completely effective: all school shootings are eliminated, no child dies from gun violence in a school, ever again. Let us even assume that school shooters would not be displaced to other locations, ie: that they won't become mall or park or clock tower shooters instead. We would save an average of 20 lives a year, with a high mark of 42 in 2012. We'd spend about $350-500M per saved life. Again, this is if everything goes perfectly. A similar number injuries would also, optimistically, be prevented.
There are an abundance of ways we can save lives, including children's lives, for far less. Some are investments: teach them more about the dangers of addictions, alcohol, drugs, gangs, HIV. Some are more acute: Spend the money on cancer research or leading-edge treatment to offset some of the two thousand childhood cancer deaths each year, or set up a free no-questions-asked cab fund for teenagers to use when they have been drinking. Hell, make it free for everyone. Create a monetary incentive for blood donations, or run ad campaigns for people to become organ donors. Provide housing for the homeless. It doesn't take much imagination to do better than several hundred million dollars per life.
The Florida legislature is in the process of passing some reform: a combination of raising the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21, 3-day waiting periods for all rifles, and $400M for mental health and school resources. The resources can include a variety of defensive measures like bulletproof glass, metal detectors, etc. All this sounds pretty good from a reform perspective, right? There was one other nugget in there, and it's a point that has also gained a lot of traction: putting guns in schools. In the Florida legislation, it would mean allowing "trained" teachers to carry guns unless their school opted into a marshal program. I hadn't seen the details of the latter, but presumably it's essentially putting a full-time, uniformed police officer in the school. Around 30% of the approximately 100,000 schools in America have such a School Resource Officer.
Is this a good idea? There are numerous lines of reasoning. One says that our children's safety is paramount, and adding a trained, qualified, armed person to their safety net is a win. Another says the SROs can lead to some unintended consequences, for example unruly children might end up with criminal charges instead of detention. There's particular concern the latter will apply for minority students. I have an entirely different concern: finite resource optimization.
We have a limited amount of funds to do all the things we'd like to do. This is true of individual budgets, state budgets, school budgets, all budgets (even federal, though they have a bit more leeway to take on debt). The goal of the SRO is noble: to save children's lives. No one contends this is a desirable outcome. However, we need to consider the cost-benefit not because we are putting a dollar amount on a life, but because we want our finite resources to protect the most lives. To compare one approach to another, we have to quantify the cost and the benefit: how many lives are saved for how many dollars, and can we deploy those dollars in a more effective way.
An SRO is a police officer. Salaries will vary, but the cost to support an officer should be at least $75k per year between salary, training, equipment, etc, amounting to around $7-10B per year if deployed to every school in the nation. Let us also suppose, optimistically, the tactic is completely effective: all school shootings are eliminated, no child dies from gun violence in a school, ever again. Let us even assume that school shooters would not be displaced to other locations, ie: that they won't become mall or park or clock tower shooters instead. We would save an average of 20 lives a year, with a high mark of 42 in 2012. We'd spend about $350-500M per saved life. Again, this is if everything goes perfectly. A similar number injuries would also, optimistically, be prevented.
There are an abundance of ways we can save lives, including children's lives, for far less. Some are investments: teach them more about the dangers of addictions, alcohol, drugs, gangs, HIV. Some are more acute: Spend the money on cancer research or leading-edge treatment to offset some of the two thousand childhood cancer deaths each year, or set up a free no-questions-asked cab fund for teenagers to use when they have been drinking. Hell, make it free for everyone. Create a monetary incentive for blood donations, or run ad campaigns for people to become organ donors. Provide housing for the homeless. It doesn't take much imagination to do better than several hundred million dollars per life.
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