TRAGEDY FOCUSES ON SAFETY IN SCHOOLS

Two recent incidents involving guns in schools, one of which led to the fatal shooting of three students the wounding of five others in a spray of bullets, is shocking evidence that no school can is absolutely safe.

Monday morning's shooting at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., and last week's incident at Cape Girardeau's public schools in which a student showed up with a pistol he hoped to sell show that problems some urban schools have had to deal with for years have found their way into quieter small-town schools in the heart of the nation's Bible Belt.

The 14-year-old accused of the shootings in West Paducah walked into the school with a .22-caliber handgun and three spare clips of ammunition, two rifles and two shotguns, all of which had been stolen from a house on Thanksgiving Day. When a volunteer prayer meeting of students ended in a school hallway, the youth opened fire. He got off 11 shots before the leader of the prayer group talked him into dropping the gun.

In Cape Girardeau, four students were arrested and may be expelled after a gun was brought onto school grounds. The gun wasn't fired, but the students were immediately arrested and suspended for 10 days in accordance with district policy and Missouri's Safe Schools Act.

The students could find it difficult to enroll in another Missouri school because the Safe Schools Act requires Missouri schools to divulge disciplinary actions against a student when requested by another district. Districts are allowed to develop their own policy regarding enrolling students from other districts. The Cape Girardeau School District's policy is not to enroll students from another district while they are being disciplined. The Safe Schools Act effectively makes schools communicate so that districts are aware of problem students when they seek to enroll.

Guns have no place at school, and the student who took the gun to school here should be made to pay for his wrongdoing. The school would be correct in taking stern disciplinary action against him. The Cape Girardeau student sneaked the gun in and administrators found out about it when another student told them. In Paducah, the shooter simply walked into school with the guns and opened fired.

It is hard to imagine why someone would do what the boy did in Paducah, or how he could bring himself to actually doing it. One would think there would be some warning sign in his prior behavior. The answer to what made him do what he did may never be known.

But it is becoming apparent that all school districts must do something about weapons being carried into their buildings. Missouri's Safe Schools Act is a step in the right direction. But with incidents like these happening so close to home, stricter school security may become necessary to prevent further tragedies.