Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

[Sea Skimmer]

That was a dumb as hell press conference. The fact remains that these killers consistently target unarmed victims and do not need rifles or high capacity magazines to do so. The shooter at Virginia Tech used two handguns both designed for only 10 round magazines, and mostly only had 10 round magazines, and still got 32 people because not one person was in a position to oppose him. You don't need to arm every teacher, one in ten would be enough to provide some kind of response, and a serious deterrent. A few areas of the US have already approved such measures, and require that they qualify expert to local police marksmanship standards and pass various background checks. Considering the rates of gun ownership in the US, only a fraction of gun owning teachers would even need to be interested, and only a fraction of those approved to make such a plan viable. It would also be logical to require say, not less then three teachers in a school be armed, or else none, so that a lone teacher turning psycho is not themselves unopposed, third one being a margin against absenteeism.

Or does some magic make only a man in a police uniform able to oppose a killer? If people didn't notice, shooters like this have tendency to blow own brain out, or surrender when opposed by any armed force. Only a minority ever even try to fight it out, and that's still an invaluable time delay.

Of course the overwhelming majority of gun deaths in the US involve nothing even remotely like this, and certainly don't involve rifles of any form, but last I heard around here that 'isn't news' and thus apparently doesn't even matter. I think the tally on gun deaths in Phily for the year is around 270 now.

[His Divine Shadow]

I have been very disappointed in the NRA press conference, it just played into all the stereotypes in a bad way. They should in my opinion have talked about safe storage and made that their angle. Now we just get dumb shit about video games and violent media and armed teachers which only the craziest pro-gun people take seriously anyway.

No wonder most of the people I know who own guns in america, hate the NRA with a passion, the mere fact that these people get to represent every gun owner, that and being just a branch of the GOP anyway.

[Sea Skimmer]

Considering the Democrats have decided to rally around a new ban on bayonet lugs as a response, did you really expect anything rational out of this? I certainly didn't expect them to compromise, just not to be so specific about the dumb. The NRA thinks the proposed law won't pass though, because it won't, so they are probably going to just do whatever they want. If the Democrats come-up with anything reasonable and passable you might see a shift in the NRA tone. The majority of NRA members support a number of possible reforms to gun laws and mental health standards vs gun ownership that might pass easily.

[ryacko]

Considering the rates of gun ownership in the US, only a fraction of gun owning teachers would even need to be interested, and only a fraction of those approved to make such a plan viable. It would also be logical to require say, not less then three teachers in a school be armed, or else none, so that a lone teacher turning psycho is not themselves unopposed, third one being a margin against absenteeism.

1. It ought to be five, since the lone teacher could shoot first.
2. Gunownership rates are lower among woman, and lower among democrats. I don't remember too many right-wing teachers.
3. The PTA, and the teacher's union are probably going to condemn the measure, no matter how logical it is. Especially if you mention the third is a hedge against absenteeism during a psycho teacher massacre.

[Nephtys]

Because owning a gun automatically turns you into a firearm wielding badass able to take down any opponent without harming bystanders, right?

Arming teachers is the worst single idea outside of giving every student a 9mm to defend themselves. All it's going to result are either:
- A student steals the gun and ammo, and shoots somebody.
- A firearm goes off by accident due to poor handling and safety
- A teacher loses it and has a gun nearby to do something awful
- A complete waste of time for teachers who already are underprepared and undertrained in their actual jobs of EDUCATING CHILDREN.

[Aaron MkII]

Or shooting a kid by accident during a crisis. You'll be roasted alive if you shoot a student while trying to hit a bad guy. When the fuck are they supposed to train anyways?

I didn't think it was possible for the discussion on a national level to get more ridiculous.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If they're trained to police standards, why are they going to perform worse in that environment than the police? Most police officers never actually encounter such an environment or even use their guns, so experience isn't a factor. I think arming school personnel is perfectly viable, if they are required to be trained as well as police and are treated like police in liability terms. I'd prefer they arm the janitors and school administration staff though so the teachers can concentrate on getting the kids out of the line of fire, while it's the people who aren't managing classrooms who shoot back.

[ryacko]

Or shooting a kid by accident during a crisis. You'll be roasted alive if you shoot a student while trying to hit a bad guy. When the fuck are they supposed to train anyways?

I didn't think it was possible for the discussion on a national level to get more ridiculous.

I might be mistaken, but you live in a country where you get x-rayed at the airport and you must take off your shoes.

Because of the threat of exploding shoes.

The head of the NRA might be right in that violent media is a bad influence, because he apparently thinks the good guys are bond heroes.

Although, if spend more money towards protecting our children, what about increasing class sizes?

[Aaron MkII]

Yeah but police officers have a culture that protects them, along with a union. Educators can't hide behind the blue wall.

And police? On average their horrible shots and the ones here...well I won't shoot if their on the range. They are incredibly careless. Same with Conservation Officers. Look at NY where they fired a dozen rounds and hit bystanders.

Really, I don't think this is a good idea. It might be workable as a temp solution until underlying issues are addressed bjt I think we should look elsewhere for solutions. Even fitting solid steel doors, armoured windows and not having the class interior visible from the corridor may discourage entry. At least it gives lockdown a meaning other then "execution"

[Aaron MkII]

Or shooting a kid by accident during a crisis. You'll be roasted alive if you shoot a student while trying to hit a bad guy. When the fuck are they supposed to train anyways?

I didn't think it was possible for the discussion on a national level to get more ridiculous.

I might be mistaken, but you live in a country where you get x-rayed at the airport and you must take off your shoes.

Because of the threat of exploding shoes.

The head of the NRA might be right in that violent media is a bad influence, because he apparently thinks the good guys are bond heroes.

Although, if spend more money towards protecting our children, what about increasing class sizes?

No, I'm Canadian.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd pay for it with a 100% tax on firearms and 400% tax on ammunition. I'd be comfortable with that kind of cost increase. Not any more than that, though.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

This entire thing is so frustrating because they're interviewing people waiting to get into a gun show in Texas and they're like "Yeah, I'm here to buy an AR-15 before they get banned, I'd never support a gun ban. I think there should be a 30-day waiting period and five references required for your background check to buy a gun, but all they talk about are banning kinds of guns and I won't support that so I'm going out to buy one in case the ban passes."

So we have people panic buying AR-15s who are still willing to support background checks of such a rigour that nobody in political power has actually proposed them! This goes to show that the democrat's gun control proposals are literally the worst possible, almost like they're calculated to prevent compromise.

[Nephtys]

If they're trained to police standards, why are they going to perform worse in that environment than the police? Most police officers never actually encounter such an environment or even use their guns, so experience isn't a factor. I think arming school personnel is perfectly viable, if they are required to be trained as well as police and are treated like police in liability terms. I'd prefer they arm the janitors and school administration staff though so the teachers can concentrate on getting the kids out of the line of fire, while it's the people who aren't managing classrooms who shoot back.

Good thing teachers don't need to do anything like you know, TEACH?

They're going to perform worse because well. Your job is NOT to enforce law, or in a pinch apprehend criminals. Your JOB is to lecture, test and teach children about math and science and english and art. And training administrators in firearms, are you kidding? Anybody who signs up to be a policeman at least at some point recognizes that an armed shootout is a possibility. That's NOT what you do when you're thinking of being a teacher.

Honestly, there's nothing more insane than arming people who otherwise wouldn't be. This isn't Somalia where having more firepower solves a damn thing. All that this is going to result in is more innocent deaths from accident and mishandling and panic, while telling impressionable kids that the people in authority over them have guns that CAN be used to shoot them.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If they're trained to police standards, why are they going to perform worse in that environment than the police? Most police officers never actually encounter such an environment or even use their guns, so experience isn't a factor. I think arming school personnel is perfectly viable, if they are required to be trained as well as police and are treated like police in liability terms. I'd prefer they arm the janitors and school administration staff though so the teachers can concentrate on getting the kids out of the line of fire, while it's the people who aren't managing classrooms who shoot back.

Good thing teachers don't need to do anything like you know, TEACH?

They're going to perform worse because well. Your job is NOT to enforce law, or in a pinch apprehend criminals. Your JOB is to lecture, test and teach children about math and science and english and art. And training administrators in firearms, are you kidding? Anybody who signs up to be a policeman at least at some point recognizes that an armed shootout is a possibility. That's NOT what you do when you're thinking of being a teacher.

Honestly, there's nothing more insane than arming people who otherwise wouldn't be. This isn't Somalia where having more firepower solves a damn thing. All that this is going to result in is more innocent deaths from accident and mishandling and panic, while telling impressionable kids that the people in authority over them have guns that CAN be used to shoot them.

I'd prefer they arm the janitors and school administration staff though so the teachers can concentrate on getting the kids out of the line of fire, while it's the people who aren't managing classrooms who shoot back.

Could you at least pretend you're answering what people write rather than running through a series of talking points?

Anyway, why not arm volunteer administrators and volunteer retired police officers, retired military personnel, etc, if they've all had enough training and pass background checks equal in both cases to that for LEOs? If a school doesn't have enough volunteers, the difference can be made up by officers whose salaries will be paid for by a tax on guns and ammunition.

[Simon_Jester]

I think arming school personnel is perfectly viable, if they are required to be trained as well as police and are treated like police in liability terms. I'd prefer they arm the janitors and school administration staff though so the teachers can concentrate on getting the kids out of the line of fire, while it's the people who aren't managing classrooms who shoot back.

[Considers the prospect of having to add a police-quality or better security training regimen to all the other stuff he has to do]

[groans]

You know what? Just shoot me.

Really, I don't think this is a good idea. It might be workable as a temp solution until underlying issues are addressed bjt I think we should look elsewhere for solutions. Even fitting solid steel doors, armoured windows and not having the class interior visible from the corridor may discourage entry. At least it gives lockdown a meaning other then "execution"

Yeah, that bothers me at the moment. A complete lockdown that traps students in the classrooms just sounds like a way for a disaster to happen.

I'd pay for it with a 100% tax on firearms and 400% tax on ammunition. I'd be comfortable with that kind of cost increase. Not any more than that, though.

If you're willing to charge that much money purely for school security... I'm going to be honest, we might get a better return from spending it on education itself. It might not save as many lives (a few dozen a year is a lot), but it'd sure improve a lot of lives (tens or hundreds of thousands a year is ALSO a lot).

Although where I work, just hiring three times as many security guards so we actually have enough manpower to patrol the halls consistently would be nice. Even if they don't protect very well against mass shootings, and I would be surprised if they didn't... I repeat, the mean time to a mass shooting at a given public school is roughly one hundred thousand years. That's assuming one mass shooting per year, which I'm pretty sure is a gross overestimate- there have been a lot of mass shootings, but not that many at schools since Columbine started the trend.

There are so many better things we could do with 20-30 thousand dollars per building per year than garrison them all.

So we have people panic buying AR-15s who are still willing to support background checks of such a rigour that nobody in political power has actually proposed them! This goes to show that the democrat's gun control proposals are literally the worst possible, almost like they're calculated to prevent compromise.

Note that the Democrats did virtually nothing on gun control before Sandy Hook- the issue had been allowed to drift, more or less. It's only this event that's causing it: a knee-jerk reaction by people who simply think violence is bad and that removing it is good, QED concession accepted.

Meanwhile, American gun owners are conditioned to expect that the Democrats want to take away all guns, whether they seriously try to do so or not. Therefore, every time we even have a brief national flurry of gun control talk, we see panic buys.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Which one posted a lecture by an expert advising to simply arm the security guards? Instead of militarizing schools for something so statistically rare and turning teachers into conscripts, why not just put a few armed security guards there?

Gunownership rates are lower among woman, and lower among democrats. I don't remember too many right-wing teachers.

I don't know about the American school system. Is there an underrepresentation of right wingers or it's just ryacko's personal experience?

[Simon_Jester]

It probably depends on the state, but in general teachers are heavily unionized, which puts them at odds with the Republican Party.

[Sea Skimmer]

Because owning a gun automatically turns you into a firearm wielding badass able to take down any opponent without harming bystanders, right?

Exactly how much firearms training do you think police officers actually have? Shall we ban the police from having firearms too?

Arming teachers is the worst single idea outside of giving every student a 9mm to defend themselves. All it's going to result are either:
- A student steals the gun and ammo, and shoots somebody.

Carry the gun on your person at all times and people steal it how?

- A firearm goes off by accident due to poor handling and safety

The odds of that killing 20 children a year are what exactly? Why have we not disarmed all police then?

- A teacher loses it and has a gun nearby to do something awful

Teachers are never searched before entering schools in the first place, that's a fucking retarded complaint to say the least. If you think a limited number of pre screen teachers are prone to violent breakdowns then maybe you better start advocating home schooling for all students in America.

- A complete waste of time for teachers who already are underprepared and undertrained in their actual jobs of EDUCATING CHILDREN.

If you had any fucking clue in the world you realize that huge numbers of teachers already own and shoot firearms. But nice job trying to dictate what a person by act of being a teacher should do in his or her free time.

[Sea Skimmer]

Which one posted a lecture by an expert advising to simply arm the security guards? Instead of militarizing schools for something so statistically rare and turning teachers into conscripts, why not just put a few armed security guards there?

One school district in PA has already done so, every school now has a retired state trooper on duty, and they intend to replace all existing security guards with armed guards by the start of the next school year. A lot of others are talking about it. But if we believe idiots here this is impossible to afford and will only lead to mass slaughter, while maintaining self declared zones of defenseless victims is somehow logical.

[Aaron MkII]

Shitloads of people are also out of work. Hiring two or so per school and providing appropriate training and equipment is going to at least create some work.

[Sea Skimmer]

At least in PA about half the people coming out of the police academies cannot even get jobs; I'm sure they'd be entirely unsuited to the job.

[Aaron MkII]

Well there you go.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, there's no reason why armed guards at schools have to get paid as much as cops, considering they'd just be showing up to work and watching security cameras ... Sure, they'd have more than just shootists, say two kids get into a knife fight they'd intervene in that too, but their duty load is going to be ridiculously less, and no punishing overtime or nighttime shifts that rip apart police marriages, so reduced pay compared to regular policing is well-justified.

And as I noted, I'm willing to basically double the price of a gun in the US to pay for it.

[Nephtys]

I'd prefer they arm the janitors and school administration staff though so the teachers can concentrate on getting the kids out of the line of fire, while it's the people who aren't managing classrooms who shoot back.

Could you at least pretend you're answering what people write rather than running through a series of talking points?

Anyway, why not arm volunteer administrators and volunteer retired police officers, retired military personnel, etc, if they've all had enough training and pass background checks equal in both cases to that for LEOs? If a school doesn't have enough volunteers, the difference can be made up by officers whose salaries will be paid for by a tax on guns and ammunition.

They're going to perform worse because well. Your job is NOT to enforce law, or in a pinch apprehend criminals. Your JOB is to lecture, test and teach children about math and science and english and art. And training administrators in firearms, are you kidding? Anybody who signs up to be a policeman at least at some point recognizes that an armed shootout is a possibility. That's NOT what you do when you're thinking of being a teacher.

Thanks for not even reading my line about training administrators. You know, answering your insane idea of arming principals and janitors? That it's an idiotic idea for the same reason. You're talking about adding 'Must be ready to shoot gunmen' onto the job openings for the guy who mops up bathrooms?

What? You're going to now trust kids lives to ARMED VOLUNTEERS who are told 'You're here to be JOHN MCCLANE COWBOY when the TERRORIST ISLAMIC NAZI COUNTERSTRIKE SCHOOL SHOOTERS appear'. I'm not going to trust any yahoo who shows up and 'volunteers' to be an authority on life and death for kids.

I can understand the idea of say, an extra cop or two in schools. We had an armed policeman in my middle and high school, if you can find a way to pay for it. But arming teachers and janitors as part of the job? That's just insane. As would be the open volunteering of whoever wants to show up and bring a gun. Because more weapons on campus is a greater chance of something going horribly wrong, to a far higher degree than the chance that one of those trusted with carrying a loaded gun just happens to be Jason Bourne, 3rd Period Art History Teacher..

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Thanks for not even reading my line about training administrators. You know, answering your insane idea of arming principals and janitors? That it's an idiotic idea for the same reason. You're talking about adding 'Must be ready to shoot gunmen' onto the job openings for the guy who mops up bathrooms?

Oh, I did read it. It was just surrounded by many, many lines about teachers irrelevant to my argument, which was what I was talking about. I addressed your point about administrators which was valid, after all. Again you miss that in your urgency.

What? You're going to now trust kids lives to ARMED VOLUNTEERS who are told 'You're here to be JOHN MCCLANE COWBOY when the TERRORIST ISLAMIC NAZI COUNTERSTRIKE SCHOOL SHOOTERS appear'. I'm not going to trust any yahoo who shows up and 'volunteers' to be an authority on life and death for kids.

I can understand the idea of say, an extra cop or two in schools. We had an armed policeman in my middle and high school, if you can find a way to pay for it. But arming teachers and janitors as part of the job? That's just insane. As would be the open volunteering of whoever wants to show up and bring a gun. Because more weapons on campus is a greater chance of something going horribly wrong, to a far higher degree than the chance that one of those trusted with carrying a loaded gun just happens to be Jason Bourne, 3rd Period Art History Teacher..

With police screening?

So I guess anyone who shows up for a police job and receives full police background screening and training just like is proposed for these volunteers is just JOHN MCCLANE COWBOY?

Ladies and gentlemen, Nephtys is right. DISARM COPS NOW! They're dangerous cowboys who cannot be trusted!

Seriously, why is it so unbelievable that someone who is able to pass police background and mental health screening might be willing to volunteer to protect an elementary school but not be willing to work as a cop and spend 10 hours a day on permanent overtime getting vomitted on by AIDS ridden drug addicts and punched at by angry drunks in domestic violence calls?