a) doing what we can to identify people who might be prone to violence and trying to keep guns out of their hands
b)buying bulletproof glass and centralized lockdown systems for every school in the country
Which one can you do with any practical assurance?
Simply put - if a situation does occur - being able to minimize the damage with better physical security is a (relatively) cheap and easy solution. Using electronic locks from a centralized location makes response time immediate and not dependent on scared teachers having to find keys or respond to the code words over the loud speaker.
THis school was already in ‘lockdown’ when the incident started - exterior doors were locked - this shows that even in this town where this kind of violence is unheard of that people are already thinking in this manner.
I am only proposing to increase the budget for those physical security efforts and increasing them to the ‘next logical’ level.
I realize now that what you may be asking about is when students travel between these buildings in between classes - or even for outdoor events/classes/sports.
Similar to School buses - those will be difficult to protect - but also have not (yet) been the focus of an attack.
One option here is to increase armed security presence on the exterior - gated and checkpoints for vehicular entrace/exit. And then we truly do start heading to the ‘prison like’ atmosphere that Marley was implying.
Improvements to the physical security of the building(s) will help minimize things like this - but nothing can truly protect students when they are ‘outside’ - so, how far do we take it?
And none of these will stop a truly determined attack -
What does bulletproof glass assure? It stops bullets better than regular glass does, of course, but it’s not actually bulletproof. You can still shoot through it if you’re motivated to do so, and I think bullet resistant glass is usually designed to resist small arms fire. This guy used a rifle. For that matter I don’t know how much could be accomplished by reinforcing the glass in the windows and front doors in any case. I think this guy did shoot his way into the school, but I’m not sure it would have mattered if the glass had stopped those bullets. A centralized lockdown system sounds good until you consider that bit you had to add about special rooms for the students who get locked out of their classrooms: the last thing you want in that situation is students running around in the hallways trying to get someone to open a door or find a safe room that might be on another floor or across the building. If a person with a gun is roaming the school, you want to clear the hallways and make sure every student is accounted for as quickly as possible. Making them run around the halls makes it more likely they’ll be shot by the killer or by police and security.
I don’t know how many schools you think should have security guards, but there are close to 100,000 public schools in America. Hiring guards for even a decent chunk of them would cost billions of dollars a year, all of that for something that happens a couple of times a year and which might contribute nothing to anyone’s safety.
Has there been a single school shooting where the situation became worse because a teacher couldn’t figure out how to lock the door or forgot all the code words? (There would need to be announcements anyway; you can’t just suddenly lock all the doors with no explanation.)
I don’t see the logic. I do see that this would probably cost tens of billions of dollars and it might feel safer, but I am not sure it would do anything.
The key though is: What makes people flip that switch and go into attack mode? Why do some outsiders do it, and others don’t?
Maybe if we seek to include and help those ostracized by society, the problem might be solved… but that sounds like wishful thinking. It CERTAINLY needs done though.
“Feeling Safer” is a good deal of importance in and of itself - as you hae stated, (and I agree) the rarity of these things is such that we would quite likely be spending ‘billions’ for little gain - EXCEPT that people would feel safer leaving thier kids in school.
There is no ‘good’ answer here -
You cannot ‘predict’ nor ‘prevent’ these - you can only prepare for how to deal with them if and when they occur - and the only thing you can do at that point is hope that your physical security is sufficient to handle the situation - and there are improvements that can be made here - if people are willing to fund it.
Everybody needs to remember that this was all started because a teacher WAS armed to the teeth. She was a gun collector and enthusiast. If this teacher wasn’t armed, the days events wouldn’t have happened… or at least the way it did.
More guns is not a solution.
I am all for more police cover/ patrol of schools though. I am for police being armed and more police funding in general. There aren’t enough cops. Period.
So all guns are semi-automatics with large, detachable magazines? I think there are probably lots of perfectly functional firearms that do not have these features and severely limit the number of shots that can be fired in a short amount of time. That’s what I am talking about.
Further, I imagine it would not be too complicated to add features to the changing or refilling of a magazine that could slow down the number of shots that can be fired.
tomcar, the killer’s mother was not a teacher at the school. That was an incorrect rumor.
Even if that were true, it would do nothing for the millions of unmodified guns and magazines that already exist except drive the prices up in the resale market.
So the answer is even more security theater: take our wonderful and effective airport procedures and transport them to schools. I agree that there is some value in making people feel safer (although most people feel their children are safe at school anyway), but it’s not tens of billions of dollars in value, and the feeling of safety is not so great that it makes visible and expensive measures preferable to more effective ones. That’s how you pay a lot of money for security that doesn’t make you safer. Schools already do drills for crises like this, and so far there’s no reason to believe that centralized lockdowns and bulletproof glass and security guards would make anyone any safer than just having the teacher lock the door - and the idea of making students run around looking for safe rooms would be counterproductive in a situation like this. It just sounds like it’s the most we can do, so let’s do it regardless of whether or not it’s effective.
Probably not. Although getting more people into psychiatric treatment would do a hell of a lot more than spending billions of dollars on bulletproof glass and electronics at schools.
there are improvements that can be made here - if people are willing to fund it.
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They shouldn’t be (and I don’t think they will). Schools are already underfunded and you’re talking about stuff that adds little or no value and would be a noticeable chunk of the federal education budget.
Aside from the fact that she wasn’t a teacher (already addressed), there’s the fact that if she were, she would certainly have been fired for cause and possibly criminally prosecuted for bringing any of her guns to school. So more guns carried by lawful people IS a solution.
And never can be; which- duh!- is why gun advocates believe more lawful people should be armed.
You are aware that your solution would have caused a gunfight at an elementary school right? Sure some would have died but a teacher with a gun would have prevailed.
Teachers are engaged in teaching and many other duties during the day, not standing as guards in the front.
If Lanza didn’t have access to guns from his mom (her being a teacher is not important, she is an associate at Morgan Stanley it seems.) he wouldn’t have gone and shot those kids.
[ol]
[li]A gunfight couldn’t have been worse than what happened, and probably better.[/li][li]No one is saying, except maybe as a straw man, that ALL teachers would be required by their position to be armed. They’re saying that any teacher who volunteers to should be able to be certified in armed defense and carry their firearm at school.[/li][li]If Lanza simply left her guns at home unlocked it was criminally negligent of her. Ideally there should be some way to require people to responsibly store their weapons. But while guns made this massacre possible, they didn’t cause it. A total ban on all firearms would somewhat reduce, but far from eliminate, violence and murder in America; and it’s legitimate to ask “and at what cost?”.[/li][/ol]
Of course people should help. That was a weird thing to say.
Anyways, most rational people, people who aren’t irrationally pro-guns, see the problem with a shoot out in a school. Its axiomatic really. Several people on here think that a shoot out in a school is a necessary evil so they can keep their guns… they are willing to let these thinks happen so that they can keep guns.
All the arguments change the subject (Heart Disease kills people! So does Alcohol!) If the basis of your argument is a logical fallacy, and includes shoot outs in schools… you might be part of the problem. Just sayin’
Your ability to have a gun, Lumpy is the cost I am willing to give up. My right to have a gun is what I am willing to give up.
I have nothing to fear. My family never had a gun growing up, and as an adult I have never had a gun. I have lived in very bad areas. I have never had this irrational fear most gun owners have.