Bill aims to deter school shootings Eagles Act of 2018 would provide officials with resources, training to detect potential threats

In an attempt to help prevent future school shootings, legislation was introduced last week to expand the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center.

The legislation is titled the “Eagles Act of 2018,” in honor of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Eagles. The high school was the site of a Feb. 14 shooting in which 17 people were killed and 17 injured.

“We need to do everything we can to better protect our kids while they're in school,” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said. “This bill will help provide school officials with the resources and training they need to detect potential threats before they materialize.”

Nelson is sponsoring the legisla- tion, along with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

“To prevent future tragedies like Parkland, a multipronged approach is needed to ensure that threats do not fall through the cracks. By providing funding to the National Threat Assessment Center, top-notch research to stop school violence will help prevent future tragedies,” Rubio said.

The Secret Service established the National Threat Assessment Center in 1998 to develop evidence-based indicators of various types of targeted violence, including school shootings, according to a fact sheet from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley runs as chairman.

The center developed a threat assessment model used by law enforcement to identify potentially violent individuals, assess whether an individual poses an imminent threat and determine how to manage the threat. Among its findings are that most attackers exhibit indicators of pre-attack behavior.

Since 2002, NTAC has trained more than 93,000 police, school administrators and others using