Arapahoe High School graduate Matt Hermsen held a candle during a vigil for shooting victim Claire Davis at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church on Dec. 20.
Arapahoe High School graduate Matt Hermsen held a candle during a vigil for shooting victim Claire Davis at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church on Dec. 20. (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)

I am so tired of reading the comments from people who don't know the answer to this very complex question: How do we stop a school shooting?

Gun control ... arming teachers ... officers in the school. All are absurd.

And they always ask the same question: Why?

Do you want to know the answer? Here it is: You have a boy who has been abused and bullied for years. He buys guns, and builds bombs. It is easy to build them, because the instructions are all over the Internet. It is easy to buy or steal or borrow the guns, because they are almost everywhere.

And yet, a proposed solution to stopping school shootings is this: Stop them when the shooter is at the school, when he drops his duffel bag and takes out the rifle or shotgun. Then an armed teacher can stop him.

Let's look at that solution: An armed teacher, untrained, without SWAT training and scared, is going to fight a school shooter. The teacher has probably only fired his weapon in a class, and has not taken a combat class, and has certainly not been involved in a gunfight to develop his skills.

In fact, the trained SWAT officers at Columbine were a complete failure, and worse. They fired blindly into the school at reflections and shadows. They fired an automatic weapon set to fully automatic into the side of the school, which put officers in danger, by their own lack of control. They fired their weapons into the school, firing through the back door, with their bullets traveling the entire length of the school before burying themselves in the doors and wall by the front office.

These are trained SWAT officers. Heavily trained, and they failed in every single way.

Imagine a teacher, his adrenaline pumping, unable to even hear over his excited state, raised heartbeat, and with tunnel vision. He will shoot at the shooters, if he manages to control himself, but he will have tunnel vision, and will not see the 100 innocent children behind the shooter. Innocent children will be killed by teachers who simply cannot handle the stress of the situation.

They will all think they are Dirty Harry before anything happens, and find out the are Barney Fife after the incident, as did the SWAT team at Columbine.

Yet some people suggest that teachers be armed and carry weapons in the school, expecting them to respond in a more professional way than a SWAT officer.

It is absurd.

Next option: Put armed officers in the school.

Again, absurd.

There was an armed officer at Columbine. The shooters knew his every move, and, in fact, if they had wanted to, or had the courage, they could have killed him to get his weapon. Place two or three officers in a school, and that is a possible scenario. The shooters will kill them to get their weapons. It is simply not possible for a school resource officer to maintain a vigilant and protective stance is a school full of 99.99 percent innocent and friendly children.

It is not possible to be eternally vigilant and instantly ready to respond. These officers are human. School resource officers cannot maintain enough of a varied schedule, and keep their activities clouded enough to stop a shooter from knowing their schedule and actions.

And, besides, the killers at Columbine were relying on bombs in duffel bags and, the police thought, in backpacks, to kill the most children they could.

What is a school resource officer going to do with 2,500 children carrying backpacks and duffel bags?

What will they be able to defend against?

OK, next option: Take away all of the guns. In America. Are you kidding?

There are millions, yes, millions, of weapons all over this country. Even if you wanted to dispose of them all, there would be millions of weapons hidden in safes and basements. And the struggle to obtain this goal would probably lead to battles over the Constitution, and angry militant citizens. The cure would be painful, and would tear this

Country apart.

OK. You are saying, "I have heard enough of your arguments. What I have not heard is any single solution from you."

Very true. Here is part of the solution:

When a parent sees a child in their home being abused, either physically or mentally, that parent must intercede.

That parent must defend the child at all costs. Step in, stop the abuse, protect the child, and put the interest of the child first.

When a coach see the jock athletes picking on a child, any child, the coach must step in and defend that child, and punish the bullies. That coach needs to teach leadership methods that will prevent bullying, and make the athletes the leaders who will protect everyone, and ridicule no one.

When a teacher sees a student pushed into a locker, that teacher must step in and protect that child. Bullying leads to resentment and hatred, and violence against the bullies.

When a teacher takes a complaint about bullying, that teacher needs to take that complaint to the principal and demand intervention, that will stop the bullying and protect the child.

None of these interventions ever happened at Columbine, and that is why the two shooters hated the teachers, coaches, principal and the school.

There are reasons for this. In the book, "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic," by James Gilligan, it is humiliation that creates violence.

In the book "When A Child Kills" by Paul Mones, it is continual mental and physical abuse that leads to an emotional state called hypervigilance, which leads the child to eventually kill his parents. It is a sad book, but full of wisdom.

At Columbine, and with most shootings, the shooters hated the abuse and their situations so much that they hated the entire school. They hated almost every student, while still identifying with the other school, abused children who they knew personally. They, in essence, killed the school, and still let some of their friends live.

The shooters at Columbine stopped in the middle of the murders in the library to let one of their friends leave. They took the time to wait before they killed the next student, to let one of their friends, who was subject to the same abusive atmosphere at Columbine, run from the room.

When a parent sees that their child is being bullied, the parent needs to file criminal charges and enforce the laws we live with. Abuse is assault, and it is a crime. When the bullies in high school are arrested, there will be no more bullying.

But mostly it falls to the principal. The failure to monitor and prevent bullying, to allow for a better Football and wrestling team was the cause of Columbine.

I am certain that every school shooting has roots in this hypervigilant revenge, as a reaction to incessant bullying.

Do you want to stop the shootings? Stop the bullying and protect the children who are being bullied. It is that simple.

You cannot disarm the student when he has drawn his weapon, but you can disarm his anger, by protecting him from abuse. Protect him and stop the abuse, and the anger will go away.

Take away their anger and their humiliation before it becomes a case of hypervigilant revenge.

And here is the second part of the solution: When a boy makes threats, he may be a threat. When a boy displays "red flag" behavior, he may be a serious threat.

We need to have proactive responses to these school boys who are angry, bullied and a danger.

The police let Eric Harris go, and he could have been put in juvenile hall for having multiple offenses. The same was true for Dylan Klebold.

In fact, the same is true for almost every school shooter. They exhibit "red flag" behavior. They make threats. They draw maps, They build bombs. They buy weapons.

They study how to build bombs on the Internet. They make death threats. They threaten other students.

And we basically ignore them.

A boy threatening students must be dealt with proactively. His home may need to be searched. His parents need to be talked to. The authorities need to proactively follow and investigate these threatening students.

We can no longer call the school or talk to the parents. We need to assign a trained threat assessment expert to every single student who is a threat. That expert needs to follow up, like a parole officer, watching for signs of escalation. They need to monitor the school, talk to the student and his friends, and intercede and interrupt the plans of the student making the threats.

This is so obvious it is painful. Every school shooter so far has given warning signs, made threats, and has essentially been left to their own devices to plan and then kill innocent people.

One shooter ordered the weapon and ammunition on the Internet, and had it delivered to his dorm room. One student was reported by other parents many times for exhibiting threatening behavior toward their son, and nothing was done by the police. These students tell their friends what they are going to do. They broadcast it to their own network, and it sits there to be remembered in the next few weeks after they have acted on their plan.

We know of one parent who was told by her daughter that Eric Harris had a "hit list" and had purchased a firearm, and the parent did not even report it.

We need to have everyone report it, and also have the police respond.

Why has no one realized that a proactive response from the police prior to the killings would be an effective deterrent?

It is so obvious, simple, and effective.

Randy Brown of Littleton is the parent of a student who was at Columbine in 1999.