Another campus attack involving a knife demonstrates that multiple victim knife attacks do occur. In the latest attack in a Houston high school, one student was killed and three injured by a knife wielding aggressor.  I have personally worked two multiple victim knife attacks when I was a school district police chief, one in an elementary school and one in an alternative school.  These attacks were thankfully not fatal but they were pretty bloody incidents.  One incident involved a little girl armed with a butcher knife.  I have seen this dynamic repeatedly working as a school security expert not only here in the U.S. but in Asia and other parts of the world as well.

We constantly discuss this in our school security assessments and in our school security keynote presentations.  The research by our school security experts has found that mass casualty edged weapons attacks are more common in countries with harsh penalties for possession of a firearm like Japan and the People’s Republic of China.  Keeping in mind that offenders use a wide array of weapons to attack people in schools can help remind us that school security measures need to address not only school shootings, but the range of school security incidents that do not involve guns.  Our team of school security experts all types of weapons assaults should be considered in school security efforts.