How can school administrators keep weapons off campus?
First, you have to understand that weapons come to campus and are used on campus because of a variety of situations. So you have to have a broad view. For example, most school weapons assaults bear no resemblance to what happened at Columbine High School or Virginia Tech. Those are extraordinarily rare events and there are measures to prevent those that won't prevent the vast majority of weapons assaults. For example, most weapons assaults on a K-12 campus or a higher education campus stem from a fight. Every time you have a fight on campus, your chances of having a stabbing or a shooting go up. So by reducing fights on campus, you reduce weapons on campus and the likelihood that they'll be used, so keep a broad approach. Look at educational efforts to inform people about your well thought out policies. Think about the triggering behaviors like bullying and fights on campus. Think about the connectivity between staff and students. Think about, as appropriate, the use of security and safety technologies such as random metal detection, techniques like visual weapons screening, having staff trained to spot the physical behaviors of the gun violator. Gun detection dogs may be appropriate to occasionally sniff lockers and student vehicles. It all depends on your situation. Like other safety measures, you have to base it on an assessment approach. If you haven't surveyed, you really don't know what your present level of weapons violations are and you may not have measures to counter the threat that is there. So take an assessment approach and then customize the approach to fit your campus.
