Stop school shootings...

"Our leaders are pointing to countries with almost total bans. They want it, they'll get it."

They're going to try. But think about it. First, to repeal the 2nd A, 2/3 of both the House & Senate have to pass it, then 3/4 of the states have to ratify it. Personally, I don't see it happening, at least in my lifetime.

Sure, they'll continue to pick parts of it apart, piece by piece like they've been doing, but a ban like Feinstein and her ilk would like to see...I don't think so.

The anti's, news media, and others like to keep pointing out that other countries don't have this 'problem', but they don't have the 2nd A either.
 
"Our leaders are pointing to countries with almost total bans. They want it, they'll get it."

They're going to try. But think about it. First, to repeal the 2nd A, 2/3 of both the House & Senate have to pass it, then 3/4 of the states have to ratify it. Personally, I don't see it happening, at least in my lifetime.
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Emphasis added.

Or, we could get one or two bad Sup. Ct. appointments. I've seen that happen so often that I expect it.
 
We have a dynamic system, or at least it should be.

To fall back on the second amendment as a safety net is not the best bet. Amendments can be repealed, not easy, but it's a possibility. All kinds of laws are on the books that people thought was a violation of their rights.

Gun owners do little in the face of these things. Most would support drastic restrictions.
None of these will stop violence. Gun violence will continue until all guns are gone.
Doesn't matter that ford, Chevy, toyota kill more young people than guns. There's a belief that something can be done about guns. To some it seems simple. It seems simple to ban guns. Politicians need something to appear proactive on the issue. So there comes UBCs.

The underlying social issues are hard to conquer. Violence can be reduced by economic prosperity... True prosperity, not fudge numbers.

Mental health issues will never be conquered, they can buy time with medication, but that only creates a time bomb.
I have my own opinion on mental health, and the practice of treating it. Mankind has little understanding of it, nowhere near enough knowledge to treat it, so I'll leave it at that.

The mass shooting phenomenon will not go away without expensive security measures. Now an officer with a gun is seen as a threat, someone could get the gun. Officers have been asked not to drop their own kids off at school while armed or in uniform because it scares the parents. College students don't want armed officers. So forget the armed civilian.
Security is seen as a nonproductive member of a team these days. Many companies have slashed their security staff. I know this as a former spouse of mine worked in corporate security for many years.
I see no real changes, many buildings need to be retrofitted, asking this of a school that can barely afford to run the printers is a tall order. Schools that do have security spend most of their efforts on keeping students out of staff parking spaces.
 
jmr40 said:
Many public schools are already hardened with doors that are harder to get into. Doors are locked and in some places you have to be buzzed in. Some issue ID's to teachers and students requiring you to scan in order to open doors.
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Sandy Hook had just installed a new system for buzzing in visitors. Look how well that worked.

Right after Sandy Hook, the town adjacent to my home town proudly announced that they were upgrading security at their grammar schools. What were they doing? Installing the same buzzer system that worked so well at Sandy Hook.

Just after Columbine, the local high school was in the planning process for a major addition and alteration project. I was asked to review the plans for building and fire code conformance. It wasn't a code issue, but what jumped off the pages at me was that ALL the new classrooms had glass sidelights next to the doors. (The old school wings did not.) I discussed it with the deputy chief of police, who agreed that it was a monumentally dumb idea. So I raised it as a potential issue, outside of the scope of my work.

The architect responded that the sidelights gave the classrooms "a sense of openess." The building committee accepted that, and they were built. I have attended adult ed classes in those new classrooms -- the sidelights don't provide anything at all, other than a way to make it easier for a shooter to gain access to the classrooms.

The new main entrance also has a buzzer system, just like Sandy Hook. It also has all-glass doors ... just like Sandy Hook.

You can't fix stupid.

jmr40 said:
Most public schools already have a School Resource Officer (SRO) on campus.
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This may be true where you live, but it very much is NOT true around here. Some towns assign an officer to each school; most do not. Some have one SRO to cover the entire town, so he/she splits his/her time among all the schools in town. Others have an officer who is designated as the first responder to any calls from the schools, but who typically isn't on the site of any school more often than once a week -- if that.

Generalizations can be misleading.
 
Whether people want to hear something shouldn't determine whether it is said, and statements like LaPierre's and Bush's, statement's that frame the issue reasonably, should help the reflective reach a reasoned conclusion.
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The problem is, that's counting on the general public to listen to what they don't necessarily want to hear. It's counting on the general public to use critical thinking.

People seem not to be wired that way. They want 30-second soundbites they can easily digest. They listen to whichever Twitterina can make the most "sense" to them in 140 characters or less.

The general public listens to emotional appeals and does a terrible job of checking sources. In that situation, if my 30-second soundbite is less compelling than the opposition's, guess who wins?

That's why we have to be very careful about what we say, and how we frame it.
 
If I'm determined to do something like that and the school building is prison-esque...I'd look at the parking, the outdoor fields, bus stops, sporting events. My point is you'll never make the school 100% secure. Even maximum security prisons have riots.

IMO, the most effective method is for people to start saying something beforehand. Almost every single one of these tragedies had some sort of glaring warning sign ahead of time...but people ignored it or said nothing. That said, there's needs to be a system in place to deal with it when and if someone reports it. I live in the DC area and if I see an unattended bad or sack lunch (not kidding) outside a government building make a call, the police arrive see it and the area is shutdown, that's not an exaggeration. We have more "See Something, Say Something" signs or flashing billboards around here than stop signs. Now of course LEO's aren't mental heath experts, but they aren't totally ignorant either and mental health experts could be employed to help. Nothing is foolproof, but IMO the majority of mass shootings seem to stem from mental health issues and not issued associated with 'regular' crime.
 
All the actively engaged anti-gun people already know what a pro-gun person will say.

They know all of the tired 'ole pro-gun cliche statements and already know how to make you look foolish for saying it.
 
Last Saturday (Oct 3) I emailed the following text to Letters to the Editor at my local paper (the Seattle Times). The have not published this yet, and I doubt if they will, even though since then they published 2 or 3 letters that espouse further restrictions on gun rights. In any case, I think this should be part of the discussion.

HOW TO STOP MASS SHOOTINGS
“Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.” Those words were written by the Umpqua Community College shooter, as quoted by the Seattle Times on October 3. Those words say far more to explain such shootings than any discussion by psychiatrists, police chiefs, professors, politicians, newspaper editors, or TV talking heads. Mass shooters tend to be pathetic loaners who profoundly crave recognition. The media “limelight” that they get after a mass shooting gives them recognition on the grandest scale. These shootings feed each other because of media coverage. Mass shootings will be greatly reduced if the media will censor themselves for the public good. Keep news reporting of these events to the barest necessities. Don’t run on day after day with coverage that shows crying mothers, bloody survivors, and politicians wringing their hands and asking “Why?” We already know why. One of the twisted killers told us exactly why in the quote above. So, come on now media people, we need you to do the right thing: Stop putting mass shootings in the limelight.
 
The Seattle Times and every other paper in the country will absolutely not stop putting these kind of events on the front page, day after day, for the simple reason that they all want to see gun confiscation and bans in the guise of gun control become enacted into law.

They may publish your letter, or one like it, but they will certainly publish dozens more pleading for 'common sense' gun control, meaning whatever the proponents seem to want at the moment.
 
The cry is to be protected, yet the demand is that it not LOOK like protection.

They expect 100% safety, and refuse to allow the only things that have proven to be even partially effective.

They ridicule the idea that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun", and yet, when there is trouble, who is called? Police (good guy with a gun).

They fear a gun as if it were a possessed evil talisman, capable of turning anyone into evil incarnate, unless they have a uniform or badge, which is apparently believed to be an effective counter spell.

They don't want them around. They don't want them seen. Not even a hint of it. They fear what someone might do. They might do evil!!!!

The drawback to this is that when someone does show up with a gun and evil intent, the only effective means of defense (a gun and someone who knows how to use it) isn't there to be used. They prohibited it. So they would feel safe.

Ask anyone who's profession touches on violence (military, police, security, etc) they will all tell you the same thing. The single most difficult person to stop is the one who does not care about living afterwards.

From the Hashishan assassins of the middle ages to Banzai charges and Kamikaze attacks in WW II, to 9/11 hijackers and suicide bombers, if the attacker is prepared to die, they are NOT easy to stop.

Background checks? Don't make me laugh. 20/20 hindsight (at best) being sold to a gullible public as preventive foresight. And they eat it up.

Mental illness? Certainly! By any "rational" standard. But also another Red Herring. Or at least a serious risk of one the way they are going to go about it.

It is the spoiled brat syndrome writ large, and in the blood of the innocent.
 
The cry is to be protected, yet the demand is that it not LOOK like protection.
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I've heard more and more the last few years that we have a right to safety. We're also seeing a paradigm shift in which people are saying responsibility to society is more important to rights. It's not just with the RKBA, either. There have been some very real attacks on free speech that might make anyone uncomfortable.
 
There are several fundamentally different philosophies in politics.

One of them is that the individual exists to serve the state. (duty to society)
You can find that in Mein Kampf, and other places.

One place you will NOT find it is the US Constitution.
 
There are approximately 400 such shootings starting in 1764.

That's right, 1764, while we were still English colonies.

The list ends with the Roseberg Or shooting last week.

It includes many shootings where no one was killed, and some where no one was hurt. Many of the shootings were done by FACULTY (or former) members.

It makes for some interesting reading.
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It does indeed. One interesting aspect of it is that of those 400 events over a span of 250 years, over 15% have occurred since the beginning of 2014 (according to the same source). Like everyone else here I don't have a solution, but something is going on, and 'stuff happens' doesn't quite fit the bill.
 
I'm just going to add my thoughts here.

1- how are these guys buying guns? The SC shooter was able to because the FBI failed to flag him, a computer error it seems. The Oregon shooter is said to have bought them legally but from whom? An FFL with a check or from family with no check?

I don't like gun control because common sense seems to go out the window. That said if they can find how this is slipping through the cracks they can perhaps nail it down.

2- I'm not sure teachers packing heat is the answer, but metal detectors might be. I don't think we need to go that far however. There has to be an answer in between. I usually disagree with most of what Bill Maher said but he had one thing right. The US is in a crisis because people are finally waking up to how much we are screwed over and that the dream of being successful is just that, a dream. If the economy improves and we can stop seeing nothing but bad news on the TV then people will feel less inclined to shoot up a school.
 
This kind of violence goes beyond criminal or heat of passion type crimes. This is total loss of humanity in a person. How can you battle it? No one knows I suspect.
Every time this happens I feel sick to my stomach. Just by the shear sickness of the event.

Then the politicians show up
On both sides. Some do feel that whatever they propose is the right thing to do.

The armed citizen will rarely, if ever, be at the right place at the right time. Police are rarely there on time.
The real issue is mental health, but to tackle that would put most everyone on a no gun list.
Effective security measures cost too much for schools to take on.

So we are all left with the same questions.
 
No system is ever going to be 100% perfect, some people will "slip through the cracks", but there are cracks, and then there are cracks.

And really, what is the point of trying to close those cracks, when the people that the system DOES CATCH today are not prosecuted??

When our own dear Vice President, when directly asked why there are so few prosecutions, said "We don't have time for that"...

Now, I grant you that, when he said it there was no fresh outcry over a mass shooting going on at that time, and so, I'm sure he felt other things were more important...

The Fed functions on a system of rules and procedures, but it takes top down direction on where to put the focus for effective operation. And when the top thinks they don't have time for prosecuting people who break federal law, not much gets done despite the system and the law.

Now that there is another public outcry building, AND with elections coming up next year, NOW they claim they are going to "fix" things.

I'll tell you this much, EVERY solution they propose will step on somebody's rights. Gun control steps on the rights of gun owners and prospective gun owners. "Mental health" data steps on everyone's medical privacy rights, or has the potential to.

Patrick Purdey, the Stockton schoolyard killer was getting disability checks from the government, because he was "mentally disabled" and unable to work. He went through the CA 14day waiting period and background check TWICE, buying two handguns. His disability was protected private medical information that BY LAW could not be given to the state, and so, he passed, and got guns "legally". (of course he did lie on the forms, but so what, we don't have time for that now, we probably didn't have time for it back then, either.....

Someone who has never committed an offense (or has never been caught) passes a background check. Everytime.

personally I wonder how a background check on someone who already owns a gun could be of any use as far as keeping guns out of the hands of the "unsuitable". Some one with a dozen guns at home isn't going to be deterred from evil by a "delay" or even a denial on a gun purchase. At most, they are going to be irritated.

And then there is always the course some of them take, steal them, or murder the gun owner and then steal them, and presto, no worries about a background check!
 
An undiagnosed or unreported mental health issue isn't a "crack in the system".

The problem is, that's counting on the general public to listen to what they don't necessarily want to hear. It's counting on the general public to use critical thinking.

People seem not to be wired that way. They want 30-second soundbites they can easily digest. They listen to whichever Twitterina can make the most "sense" to them in 140 characters or less.

The general public listens to emotional appeals and does a terrible job of checking sources. In that situation, if my 30-second soundbite is less compelling than the opposition's, guess who wins?

That's why we have to be very careful about what we say, and how we frame it.
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If a sense of caution discourages an appeal to prudence and reason, then it isn't truly caution. A feckless anxiety that people who already oppose a right will belittle an argument can look more like a dithering countenance and lack of confidence than sober caution.

While the analytical capacity of lots of people seems like a sound basis for a bottomless anxiety about the future, the "general public" aren't a homogenous mass. Lots of progress can be made at the margins where people observe and are persuaded. In the wake of each one of these tragedies, a sort of reasoned argument is made by restriction advocates: a gun caused a harm, so a restriction on guns will restrict the harm. We are too familiar with the problems present in that reasoning, but it is a [poor] reasoning.

Broadly, three sorts of response are immediately available.

1. No response at all. This looks like an admission -- a reasonable person confronted by the opportunism of post tragedy calls for suspension or restriction of rights will voice his disagreement. If you are Jeb Bush and you are asked whether you support re-imposition of the AWB, no response is both a personal defeat and a concession on the issue.

2. Call for an intermediate restriction to relieve the political pressure for greater restriction. This may be some of the motivating force behind calls for more strict mental health controls.

3. An explanation as to why further controls are not warranted.

Is the aftermath of high profile murder the time for this sort of argument? Yes. It is the public focus on the issue that draws draws the opportunistic calls for restriction. Responding later when the issue has passed public notice isn't effective. For people not interested particularly in this area, the attention span is likely quite short and if your position isn't out quickly, it largely isn't out at all.

So, a "good guy with a gun" may be mocked by some. Chris Mintz took seven bullets trying to stop the Oregon killer while his firearm sat in his car. Isn't the Oregon incident an example of a "good guy without a gun"?

That succinct explanations of the problems with politically expedient non-remedies meet public opposition from opponents of the underlying right isn't evidence that they are poorly timed or tone deaf. The argument is going to happen after these events; neither you nor I have a choice in that.
 
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Sandy Hook had just installed a new system for buzzing in visitors. Look how well that worked.

Right after Sandy Hook, the town adjacent to my home town proudly announced that they were upgrading security at their grammar schools. What were they doing? Installing the same buzzer system that worked so well at Sandy Hook.

Just after Columbine, the local high school was in the planning process for a major addition and alteration project. I was asked to review the plans for building and fire code conformance. It wasn't a code issue, but what jumped off the pages at me was that ALL the new classrooms had glass sidelights next to the doors. (The old school wings did not.) I discussed it with the deputy chief of police, who agreed that it was a monumentally dumb idea. So I raised it as a potential issue, outside of the scope of my work.

The architect responded that the sidelights gave the classrooms "a sense of openess." The building committee accepted that, and they were built. I have attended adult ed classes in those new classrooms -- the sidelights don't provide anything at all, other than a way to make it easier for a shooter to gain access to the classrooms.

The new main entrance also has a buzzer system, just like Sandy Hook. It also has all-glass doors ... just like Sandy Hook.

You can't fix stupid.
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If nothing else, we have gained knowledge from those tragedies. One of them is the use of bulletproof glass and the presence of someone behind bullet proof glass that can see who is wanting to enter, before they are buzzed in. Behind many glass main entry ways into school are solid metal fire-doors that many folks do not see. Many of them could not be closed before unless the fire alarm was activated. Now many can, or staff is told to hit the fire alarm also if there is an active shooter.

Part of the problem is also complacency. Folks fall into a false sense of security because they have a small form of protection or they just don't believe it will ever happen to them. Teachers don't lock classroom doors while class is in session because they get tired of going to the door to let Johnny in because he was late or had to go to the bathroom/office. Coaches block doors open to let students in after outside gym class, instead of holding the door open themselves until all the known students are inside. Locker rooms with access doors to the outside are left unlocked or unattended during outside practices. Believe me, most High School kids know every trick in the book and every door that is left unlocked. In our High School, the biggest problem is the kids themselves. They'll hold an auto-locking entry door open so another student can go to their car and get something or so they can get cell phone coverage, or they block it open for themselves. We had a lockdown last year because of a suspicious person on the grounds. It happened right at dismissal time(IMHO, one of the most vulnerable times). Because of fire and safety codes, doors can only be locked to prevent folks from getting in. Because school was over, several students pushed staff members out of the way, that were trying to prevent them from leaving, so they could leave. Hard for a 100# female teacher to tackle a 220# football player and hold them back. Hard for a male staff member to tackle a female student, without the risk of some form of accusation and sued by parents. Still how do you explain to their parents if they get shot when they walk out of the building? Another problem is, kids are in the building long after school hours and after the building becomes a community center and doors are open and unlocked to the general public.

This is a work in progress for most schools. Many schools have such tight budget constrictions right now, that they have to decide between essential staff or more security. God forbid they cut the Football budget. Besides the construction of more security, there is the cost and the time of training teachers and staff. On top of all other precautions, is the level of awareness folks have. You have to notice the kid trying to get in with an odd looking duffle bag and keep an eye on him till you are sure he is safe. You have to notice and take action when you see someone someplace they aren't supposed to be. As a adult teacher or staff member, you have to take some form of action to protect the students under your care. You don't stand there and watch them executed till you are executed yourself.
 
You stop school shootings by protecting the school.. you protect the school using the usual tenets of protection. Arming the teachers is a poor plan simply because they cannot act, function and carry out duties as "teachers" and actually contribute meaningfully toward [proactive] security. Is it better than nothing? sure.. but thats not how you develop a protection protocol. The biggest problem with schools is that there is not real access control and people refuse to use structural features which might not look pleasing or inviting. Protection costs money and people are simply not invested in letting go of the dollar.

If you want to protect a school it will require technology, protection personnel, support personnel, policy/procedure changes, a robust communications system, equipment, training, vehicles and an operating budget.
 
If you want to protect a school it will require technology, protection personnel, support personnel, policy/procedure changes, a robust communications system, equipment, training, vehicles and an operating budget.
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That doesn't sound much like a school to me.

Look at 44AMP's post number 32. Murder in schools is uncommon. Pouring money and people into making a school resemble a supermax prison doesn't really serve the primary mission of a school, education.

Allowing staff a modest defensive option seems much less disruptive and allows a school to retain an educational character.
 
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