Across the Atlantic, Europeans Take Different Approach to School Safety

By Darcia Harris Bowman

For Americans living in the shadow of the Columbine High School massacre, the details of the deadly school shooting in Germany last month sounded eerily familiar.

A 19-year-old, dressed in black and armed to the teeth, stormed through Gutenberg High School in the eastern German city of Erfurt, shooting teachers and sending students fleeing for cover. The teenager claimed 16 lives before he killed himself, making his rampage Germany's bloodiest mass murder since World War II and the world's deadliest school shooting since the 15 deaths at Colorado's Columbine High in April 1999.

The similarities between the two shootings immediately raised public concerns that the kind of lethal violence that has hit suburban schools throughout the United States over the past decade might be emerging in Europe. But in the weeks since the April 26 incident at Gutenberg High, many Germans and other Europeans...