Another School Shooting Happened Where “It Can’t Happen Here”

Yesterday, a 20-year-old former student walked into Pauls Valley High School in Oklahoma in the middle of the school day armed with a gun.

According to investigators, Victor Hawkins entered the school around 2:20 p.m. and made it into the lobby. Before he could get any further, Principal Kirk Moore and other staff stepped in and physically confronted him. During that confrontation, Moore was shot in the leg. Staff managed to subdue Hawkins on the spot and hold him until law enforcement arrived.

Moore was the only person injured. He was airlifted to a hospital in Oklahoma City and is listed in stable condition.

But let’s stop right there for a moment, because people hear ‘shot in the leg,’ and their brains go straight to TV logic, where the character limps for a scene or two and shows up next week like nothing happened.

However, a gunshot to the leg can shatter a femur, one of the strongest bones in the body. It can sever a major artery, and you can bleed out in minutes. It can leave permanent damage even if you survive. Moore didn’t just take a hit and walk it off. He took a bullet stopping someone who was actively firing inside a school.

Hawkins was taken into custody at the scene and booked into the Garvin County Jail on two counts of pointing a firearm, one count of shooting with intent to kill, and two counts of unlawful carry. As of now, there’s no clear motive. Just another former student showing up armed at a place he used to attend, which is a pattern we’ve seen more times than anyone wants to admit. However, I would lay odds it was probably about some perceived slight that only existed in the shooter’s mind.

Officials and politicians did what they always do afterward. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt offered the stereotypical ‘thoughts and prayers’ and praised Moore’s actions. Law enforcement praised the staff. School officials called it an educator’s worst nightmare.

There’s already talk about how Hawkins got into the building. Were the doors locked? Was there a failure in access control? Did someone let him in? That’s the argument that always comes up after something like this, like if we just fix the right door or install the right system, we can engineer our way out of this.

But that’s not the real argument.

The real argument is that a 20-year-old was able to get a gun, walk into a school, and start firing.

You can harden every entrance in the country, and it only takes one gap or one mistake, and someone with a gun is inside a school. The gun is the constant. That’s the common denominator in every one of these stories.

What stopped this from becoming something worse wasn’t a security system.

It was a man who saw what was happening and moved faster than the shooter expected.

Principal Moore has been called a hero by just about everyone involved, from students to law enforcement to school officials. And this time, it fits. Not because it sounds good in a headline, but because without him, this story likely ends very differently.

Still, you’re hearing the same thing from people in Pauls Valley that you hear almost every time.

“This doesn’t happen here.”

Except it does.

It happened in Littleton, Colorado; Uvalde, Texas; and Parkland, Florida, among many others.

All small towns and tight-knit communities. Places where people thought they were insulated from this kind of thing right up until the moment they weren’t.

Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, just joined that list.

The only difference this time is that someone stepped in before the list of victims could grow into a memorial.

(Sources)