STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And now let's bring in Juliette Kayyem, former Homeland Security official who writes the Substack newsletter, Early Warning. Juliette, welcome back.
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What do you make of the security protocols that we heard Arezou describe there - secure vestibules, ID check, electronic doorways, very quick lockdown?
KAYYEM: What's interesting to me is, of course, that the gunman either knew that the doors were locked because there is the reporting and the police have confirmed he shot through locked doors. So when you're an investigator, you're looking at, you know, had he cased the place? Did he know what - what are the relationships with the school that he would know how to bypass those security protocols and get into the school so quickly?
INSKEEP: Are there special problems with trying to figure out the motives of someone in this situation, even with all the experience people have had by now of trying to do it?
KAYYEM: Well, you know, sometimes we want to look for this eureka moment, you know, like, oh, that explains why someone does this, and sometimes we come up short. But obviously, they know who he is. He's 16 years old. They know he's from the community. So the investigation is looking at, you know, sort of the physical investigation, his home, his computer. Was he in touch with anyone? Was he radicalized in some political or religious way? We simply don't know that yet. And then, of course, friends and family and what did they know? The United States - or there's starting to be new case law that goes - that prosecutes or investigates parents for the behavior of children.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
KAYYEM: And given Oregon's pretty strict gun rules, you know, he could not have purchased that gun at 16 years old. He should not have been in possession in it. There is going to be an investigation of the parents about how he had access to that gun and whether they had any suspicion that he was planning this.
INSKEEP: One way to look at this shooting, of course, is that all the different laws and security protocols failed because people were killed in the end. But I suppose, as we learn more, we may learn that some of these procedures saved lives, do you think?
KAYYEM: I think so. I mean, look, there's not a single solution - we take guns off the street, or we have stricter gun laws, and everything will be fine. We have to look at this as sort of multiple layered defenses from what the - from, you know, the run, hide, fight protocols that we teach parents and teachers and students to the defensive apparatus at the school itself, to guards at the school, to gun laws, to parents taking responsibility for the behavior of their kids. All of them combined to try to minimize gun violence. So we shouldn't look at this as, well, they have strong gun laws, and they had security at the school and we're all going to throw up our hands.
INSKEEP: Could I ask about one other thing? I was reading The New York Times account of this this morning, and it's my memory that they had a paragraph that referred to a spasm of school shootings that have spread across decades. Have we learned anything? Have we progressed in any way through all of these?
KAYYEM: I mean, we should look at it that way, even though it doesn't seem that way. I mean, we haven't solved the root cause, which is we are a nation that has a disease, which is people view schools as rich targets. They take guns, and they shoot kids. We have not solved this problem. And so we just keep putting up, you know, these layered defenses I was talking about until we can begin to minimize, essentially, you know, what motivates this, as well as the ability of people to get guns.
INSKEEP: Juliette Kayyem writes Early Warning. Thank you so much.
KAYYEM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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