EDITORIAL — Copycat acts and shooting threats

The latest issue our country’s educational system is facing right now is, you guessed it, school shootings.

Following the school shooting that killed three students in Tacloban and wounded 20 others last week, there’s now a flurry of action from authorities to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Everything from training for active shooter scenarios to banning youths from social media and violent online games is being put on the table.

We have reason to be afraid. And this is because sensational crimes have the tendency to inspire copycat incidents.

In fact, authorities said two prospective school shooting incidents have been prevented.

According to Department of the Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla, an alleged school shooting or stabbing in Leyte was prevented last Wednesday, June 24, following a tip from Sen. Bam Aquino.

Remulla said they were alerted to cryptic Facebook posts of a 14-year-old student in Tolosa who said they were planning a mass shooting or stabbing in their school.

Investigation revealed that the student was under distress because of family problems. Remulla also said the student might have been influenced by the Tacloban school shooting.

Meanwhile, in Batangas, a school’s social media page received a message from a “bullied” student also threatening a mass stabbing or shooting.

“I will shoot or stab you all in Grades 7, 8, 9, 10. I’m a Grade 10 student. You don’t know me, but you bully me,” the threat read, as paraphrased by PNP public information chief Police Colonel Allen Rae Co.

Another thing we have to be prepared for is how the mere threat of a school shooting can be abused or just used to disrupt or make trouble.

A shooting doesn’t have to be carried out to be disruptive. Even the threat of one may now be used to disrupt school events; the same way bomb threats are used to disrupt the operations of a government office, school, or private institution.

And the sadder thing is, because we don’t want something like this to ever happen again, we now have to take each threat seriously, the same way we treat bomb threats.