School Stabbing Shows Security is Far from Perfect

On the morning of September 24, 2025, the halls of Carrick High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, became the stage for an attack that looked far less like a spur-of-the-moment fight and far more like a planned assault. Sixteen-year-old Anthony Taulton, now charged as an adult, brought a kitchen knife from home, concealed it in his bookbag to get past the school’s metal detectors and security checks, and then shifted it into his hoodie pocket once inside the building. By the time he squared off with another student, he had already prepared himself for violence.

When the confrontation began, surveillance cameras captured Taulton facing down one of the boys before lunging into a fight that left three students stabbed. Two were rushed to hospitals with abdominal wounds, while a third was treated for a cut on the scene. Taulton himself suffered a hand injury and was patched up before being taken into police custody. The video evidence is damning because it doesn’t support his claims of self-defense. Instead of confirming that he lashed out under threat, the footage shows a teenager who arrived armed and ready to use the weapon he had smuggled past every supposed layer of protection the school had in place.

That fact alone should rattle anyone who puts blind faith in metal detectors, bag checks, and roaming officers. Carrick High had all of those, yet a student managed to slip in a kitchen knife without much effort. The school was locked down after the attack, and parents were forced to line up for a controlled release of their children. But the damage had already been done, proving again that security theater doesn’t guarantee safety. If a sixteen-year-old could carry out a stabbing in broad daylight under these measures, it is not hard to imagine what would have happened had the weapon been a gun instead of a blade. A knife can cause serious harm, and it did, but it does not leave behind rows of dead teenagers. The next time a ‘responsible gun owner’™ claims knives are just as deadly, they should be asked to point out a single school stabbing with a double-digit body count.

Adding to the sense of premeditation is the timeline. Thirty minutes before the attack, Taulton’s mother contacted the school to warn that her son feared a fight. She told local reporters that he did not even want to attend that morning. What she didn’t know was that her son had already armed himself and carried the weapon through security with the intention of using it. Court filings make clear that he had been embroiled in ongoing disputes for weeks, spurred on by threatening Instagram messages. He wasn’t simply a nervous student walking into an ambush; he was a teenager who had prepared for violence and followed through.

The school district can review footage and re-examine protocols, but none of that erases the fact that a boy walked into class that morning with a knife and a plan. If this had been a gun, Pittsburgh would be counting bodies instead of hospital admissions. And that distinction, as uncomfortable as it may be, is the only reason this story is not another entry in the country’s long list of mass school shootings.

(Sources)