NORFOLK, Va. — Another mass shooting in America has many people feeling helpless.
Three children and three adults were killed at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday. It was the 89th incident of some form of gun violence on a school campus this year, according to the K-12 Shooting Database.
13News Now talked with David Riedman, the man behind the K-12 Shooting Database's research, about what the average person can do to help stop another school shooting from happening.
What are the warning signs?
Riedman said it's likely there were a number of warning signs in the last few weeks or months that the Nashville school shooter was on a "pathway towards committing mass violence."
"What we really need to do is be setting up the social infrastructure for the same way things happened after 9/11 where 'see something, say something' was a national message that everybody knew and understood," Riedman said.
Riedman has tracked every school shooting since 1970 and said there are often noticeable changes before someone commits a mass shooting.
"If we have messages and education to the public to know how to spot those things, and then we have a system of infrastructure where somebody who is in crisis can get help, and there can be intervention before they commit mass violence. I think that is really the only way that we can address this," Riedman said.
What solutions won't work?
In Nashville, the suspect got inside the school by shooting through a glass door.
Riedman says the answer is not to get rid of glass doors.
"That's not viable," he said. "You're not going to pour concrete and fill in hundreds of first-floor windows and doors."
Again, he gave an analogy to the September 11th attacks of 2001, and how Americans responded to the tragedy.
"We couldn't build a wall around every building, and make sure every skyscraper could withstand a 747 hitting it," he said. "What we had to do was say, we're going to engage the public in preventing acts of terrorism."
Riedman said there must be intervention and help for people in crisis well before it gets to that point.
"Once somebody arrives with a gun on campus, it's already too late," Riedman said. "It is very, very difficult to stop a surprise attack from a determined assailant, so we need to make every step possible in the weeks and months prior to try and avert the violence."
Riedman’s research found that 75 people were shot on school property so far this year in America.
When it comes to overall gun incidents on K-12 campuses, he says 2023 is trending to be the worst year on record.
"It's a very, very complex problem. I don't think anybody really understands the breadth of these issues and the complexity of dealing with each one," he said.