Another Campus Atrocity

The fatal shooting at Fairfax High School on Thursday casts a pall on that campus, and this city. A teen-ager is dead and another student is seriously wounded because a classmate got his hands on a high-powered handgun and took it to school.

Initial police reports suggested the shooting was accidental. The young gunman, if he can be called that, had tucked a powerful .357 magnum into his book bag, apparently to protect himself going to and from school.

Details were sketchy, but the gun was believed to have gone off when he was rummaging through his knapsack or when he was showing off the weapon. Whatever the case, the grim results cannot be reversed.

This shooting prompts so many questions. How did the youngster, whose name has been withheld by authorities because of his age, get the gun in the first place? What made him believe it was necessary that he take it to school?

Thursday’s shooting was not the first on the Fairfax campus. In 1986, a recent graduate who had returned to visit teachers was shot to death by a gang member. Why didn’t that murder prompt school district officials to install metal detectors?

Guns are not yet as common as bologna sandwiches on high school campuses, but Los Angeles Unified School District officials did confiscate 405 firearms of various kinds last year. Nationally, as many as one in five high school students has carried a weapon on campus, according to statistics from the National School Safety Center.

Guns are too common in Los Angeles. So are the graves of young people.