buck460XVR said:
The gun culture and availability have both evolved over the years. I don't know how old you are, but I'm in my 60s. When I went to High School/College, there were very few if any semi-auto rifles, much less semi-auto handguns in the average gun owner's household. Hi capacity back then was a 5 round mag in a rifle or a 7 rounder in a 1911. Exceptions were .22s. Folks seldom had thousands of rounds of ammo, that's just how it was. They felt lucky to have a box of 20 rifle rounds or a couple 50 round boxes of .22. All this has escalated, along with the culture. Why was it that at one time, all LEOs needed was a 5 shot .38? What changed that they now need a handgun with a 15 round mag, with two extra mags on their belt. Why is there now a Ar-type rifle with 30 round mags in the police car when before all that was needed was a model 97 or a model 12 riot gun? Why is body armor standard wear?
I was born only about 15 years after you.
When I was in school nearly no one was known to have a firearm. When you were in school, lots of "gun guys" were still buying surplus. The older fellows in my office all bought mausers and put "sporter" stocks on them when they were young.
Don't POs always want better equipment? They may not really need to be dressed for a swat raid, and they might be better POs overall without some of that, but it is human nature to want the newest and best. I think some PDs have ARs because they are government surplus, sort of like those old mausers.
Moreover, more modern arms can't be evidence of an especially American gun culture if euro POs also have these things.
buck460XVR said:
Same reason we now need more security at schools. The escalation of our gun culture. Along with the increase in firepower in the already instilled culture, was the increase in social media and news broadcasts, and the new way to become a household name. Sensationalism of the news 24 hours a day became the norm as opposed to the business type way it used to be broadcast, once a day. Used to be when folks killed, they killed someone specific and for a purpose. Now, the trend is to kill the most random victims in the shortest amount of time while creating the biggest news story.
Is it possible that the sensationalized media have given you a false impression of the change you describe? Charles Lee Whitman killed people he couldn't individually identify, and that would have been while you were in school.
buck460XVR said:
Our school district was the target of a school shooting back in 1969. It consisted of one student carrying a 20 ga. shotgun walking into the open building, going to the open office and shooting the principal as he sat at his desk. The shooter then walked out of the building. He motive was to kill the principle that had reprimanded him. He never thought that continuing to shoot innocent victims would give him more fame, because it wouldn't have happened. Nor did he have the firepower to do much more, becaiuse he brought the only weapon available to him along with all the ammo from his home. Just a few rounds. That was the norm back then....not so much anymore. That's why school security has to evolve along with the gun culture.
That doesn't follow.
You had a murder in your school. We didn't have minimal security in schools then because shotguns only held three or five rounds and the body counts would be low. We had modest security then because we started each day not expecting
anyone to be killed.
In most places it is the same way now.
buck460XVR said:
A dead child is a tragedy, but I've yet to hear a parent of a child shot in school wish the child had instead been burned or poisoned to death. The means by which the tragedy is achieved doesn't bear on the tragic character of the act. Focusing on the means as if that were integral to the tragedy is an error.
You say that like the kids were blessed to have been shot to death.
No, I write that as if you may have misidentified the reason people mourn the death of a child. The means aren't integral to the resulting sorrow.
buck460XVR said:
People will differ as to what constitutes reasonable security for a school. I don't like the business with automatically locking doors and swipe cards; I don't see them as a good fit for an academic institution. However, if parents want that sort of thing we will see more of it even if it isn't a reasonable measure.
Why is it you don't like those businesses? Too much inconvenience? The college my youngest son attends has a swipe reader at every entrance to every building. While it does not keep that student attending that school from getting in and doing harm, it does keep others out, or at least impedes them and gives victims time. The use of the card has become second nature. Swipes only allow folks with authorized access to go in specific areas, not the whole school. This limits even those students with some access total access. Again, there is no one best solution to this, but many just so-so solutions.
I dislike these things in schools for two reasons:
The first is pedagogic. Teaching people to function within the shadow of an Orwellian administration that determines which room you may enter inures them to an unhealthy acceptance of an unseen authority.
The second is that technological remedies are nearly always less smart than people. May be 20 years ago, federal court houses installed metal detectors. A metal detector is an annoyance to both the person who walks through it and the personnel who have to stop anyone who produces a beep. So the personnel turn the detector down so I can walk through with lot of metal, change, watch, suspenders...., and produce no beep. A couple of times a year they must be inspected, because they get turned up again. That lasts about a week.