Just how concerned are you with gun violence in schools?

[Bay Boy]

It appears that most here are against any type of armed security at our schools. So to me that means most people feel that something happening like what occurred at Sandy Hook is a very uncommon event. Am I right or wrong here?

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Uncommon, but all too common.

This won't be the last time. It is a sick society we are living in.

[Niceguy1]

2. it's statistically

Very rare. As violence goes we face greater problems elsewhere but incidents like that one tend to grab more attention.

[rightsideout]

3. It doesn't have anything to do with it being an uncommon event

It has more to do with the idiotic idea of arming teachers, janitors and administrators.

[Bay Boy]

7. Am I correct that you are implying that...

...arming teachers, janitors and administrators would cause more children's deaths than they would prevent?

[Blue Idaho]

11. So...

Do you think more bullets flying through the air will make the kids in that environment safer of more at risk?

[Bay Boy]

18. I asked you a question first...

...

[Blue Idaho]

44. I understand your oh so clever technique...

Why don't you try being more open if you want a real discussion?

[Bay Boy]

45. Oh goody somebody thinks I'm clever!

You also could have responded with a 'yes' or a 'no'.
If you would have said 'yes' I wouldn't have been able to argue with you because we have no way of knowing.

[Blue Idaho]

46. I could do lots of things...

Feeding your ego isn't one of them.

[HockeyMom]

14. Having worked with at risk pre-teen boys

One boy stabbed a TA with her pen which she forgot to lock up (required). What would this boy have done if she had a gun and forgot to lock it up? She, me, and who knows how many other staff and kids, would be dead now if he got his hands on a gun. Yes, this school had an armed deputy, but how long would it have taken for him to stop this STUDENT? These boys were in self-contained classes in a regular public elementary school.

Bad, bad, idea school personnel having guns.

[Bay Boy]

19. Did you say a pen?

I regular old pen that you write with? And they are required to lock up said pens?

[Hoyt]

4. Personally I'm opposed to taking that approach to gun violence, just to keep the gun nuts'

pipeline to more guns in more places wide open.

[Bay Boy]

5. What is it you're seeing as...

...'the easy approach to gun violence'?

[Hoyt]

9. Arming people in schools, instead of restricting guns and gun nuts.

That just perpetuates same crap. It's time to bite the bullet and pass laws like Australia did in 1996.

It's also time for gun crowd to be responsible, rather than just talking about it.

[MrSlayer]

6. Personally, not at all.

Sandy Hook is an anomaly. Things like that are incredibly rare considering our population and the amount of like incidents that occur. I don't worry a single bit about gun violence in my kids' schools. I don't worry about gun violence at all to be honest and I live in a major city that has its share of violent crime.

[bballguy7013]

8. as bad as it is...

Things like newtown, columbine, and va tech are awful tradegies. But they are almost impossible to stop. Gun violence in schools is a terrible reality that we must face, the important thing is to pressure our government officials to make comprehensive gun laws to make owning a gun extremely difficult.

[Hoyt]

10. Exactly.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. A 17 year old child just died this afternoon after being shot

while 2 others were wounded, at a field/playground where varsity players were practicing. across from Overbrook High School here in Philadelphia. There was a fight and out came the guns.

Edit to add link: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130411_Student__2_others_shot_near_Overbrook_High.html

This has got to stop. The mass proliferation of guns on the streets, thanks to straw purchasers has got to stop.

[Bay Boy]

22. The straw purchase side of this equation is...

...what I would like to see addressed. People need to go to jail for this and that needs to be publicized in the media so others know you can go to jail for it. Plus placards at gun stores should be prominently displayed.

[hack89]

13. Nothing to justify guns in school

I certainly think it is worth the money to invest in better physical security like stronger doors, better locks, locks on classroom doors, safe rooms, etc.

[bballguy7013]

15. its real but...

The fear of gun violence in school is real, but what can we suggest. With the republican house there will be no compromise like increasing security, education, and making the locks better. The only compromise for the republicans is to put armed officers in schools. And honestly, does putting more guns in a school solve the gun problem?

[Thinkingabout]

16. There was armed guards at Columbine and still had a mass killing. The shooter at Sandy Hook got

155 rounds in around 5 minutes because of high capacity magazines, this is a problem. The weapons in his home was not properly secured and he got them into his hands. It is about reasonable and sensible gun ownership.

[kwassa]

17. Kids are far more at risk at being shot at home.

Than at schools themseelves.

That would be 180 children, 11 years of age or younger, who were killed by a firearm in 2010, according to the most recent report on violent deaths from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says Jonathan Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The CDC breakdown: 41 deaths were classified as unintentional, 127 as homicide, four as suicide, and eight from an undetermined intent.

And overwhelmingly, they died one by one at home.

"In 2009, among 16 participating states in the National Violent Death Reporting System, over 86% of all firearm deaths of children 11 or younger took place in or around a home," Lowy says in an e-mail to USA TODAY.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/17/gun-control-children-newtown-school-schooting/1775469/

[cherokeeprogressive]

20. No guns in schools. Not now, not ever.

Drones.

[Egalitarian Thug]

21. It is very uncommon. Americans have become the perfect flock to feed the wolves.

Absolutely, without exception, anything the people who decide put in front of them on their Soma-Box is what they will "care" about.

They will ignore the desperation and destitution in the street, they will ignore their own shitty pay for ever more work, the will ignore the decline of their own health even as they swallow more and more toxic swill. Just give them a celebrity to gawk at and a group of "serious people" discussing "the issues that matter", and they will just nod their heads and do whatever they are told.

"The strong go crazy, the weak go along."

[Recursion]

23. Risk assessment. Random mass shootings are rare. "Normal" shootings are less rare.

Having a gun on campus, the argument goes, increases the potential for "normal" shootings, which are orders of magnitude more common as it is. It's like putting a wood stove in your house to avoid hypothermia -- hypothermia is much more rare than your house burning down, which the stove makes more likely.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

24. That it's uncommon doesn't mean we have to be dismissive of the problem.

I'll freely admit that Sandy Hook has crossed my mind multiple times since December when I drop my daughter off at school.

I know that it's very unlikely to happen, but that doesn't stop my mind from worrying. That there happened to be a fatal shooting at my office building last week (murder-suicide) brought home the fact that these things actually do happen in real life to real people.

As to the "armed security" question: I'm not necessarily opposed to uniformed police officers in schools, although I hardly think that's the ultimate solution to our gun violence problem. However, I am against private "armed guards" with questionable qualifications and training (think George Zimmerman) and I am 1000% against the idea that teachers need to be armed.

[Recursion]

29. It's curious how many parents have mentioned that particular scenario

Driving a child to school and worrying about his/her safety, despite the fact that far and away the most dangerous time any child spends in a given day is riding in the car.

I'm not dismissing your worry; I'm saying the human brain and emotions don't deal well with real risk assessment.

Kids today are safer in their schools than any of us older than them were at any point in our schools.

[Bay Boy]

31. What makes you say this:

Kids today are safer in their schools than any of us older than them were at any point in our schools.

I don't recall any school shootings prior to the 1990s Columbine era.

[Recursion]

33. The rate of shootings in schools has been constantly dropping since the mid 1990s

It is lower today than it was in the 1960s (violence in schools of all kinds, not just shootings). In 1993, there were 42 homicides in school per 1000 students. This year there were 2 per 1000. That's not noise: that's significant improvement.

Random mass shootings were not as common and not as well-publicized before the late 1990s, true. But then again there's a race and class element there: when a white middle-class student shoots a lot of people, everyone searches for reasons; when a poor black student shoots a lot of people, people don't look as hard. (There was a very troubling focus group on this: they showed them a fake headline "4 Killed, 2 injured at local college, gunman in custody" and asked "do you think the shooter is mentally ill?" One group was just given a random college, the other an HBCU. The results were depressing.)

[jmg257]

25. You feel a good guy with a gun is the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun,

so of course it appears, to YOU, that being against different types of armed security means no one is worried about it.

On both those points you are wrong.

Newtown was an uncommon event, but still it happened, and events like it do so way too often. What's more scary is that they happen WAAY too easily.


Sure most of us let our kids go to school, but doesn't mean we aren't concerned about it.

[Bay Boy]

47. If this type of event was common...

...people would want armed guards of some sort, because it isn't common people feel the risk of allowing people to carry weapons on school is too high.

[KharmaTrain]

26. The Contentious Issue Of Cops In Schools...

...our local school has been battling this for the better part of a decade. There are those who feel having a cop (yes, armed) not only would prevent a Sandy Hook style shooting spree but also other types of crime (specifically drugs). On the other side are parents who feel allowing cops to roam the school and have access to search bags and lockers as a violation of personal rights and more "authoritarianism" in the public square.

The best prevention of having someone go wild with a gun in a school is to prevent them from getting the gun and into the school in the first place. Once their there you can have all the guns and security in the world and the element of surprise will still be with the gunner and the more guns around mean the more bullets flying meaning the more likely innocent people are going to get killed...

[99Forever]

27. Your premise is bull shit.

"Armed security" was at Columbine? How did that work out for you?



The stooooopid burns.

[Johonny]

35. this

+1

[IdaBriggs]

42. Yes, Columbine did have "armed security" but as I recall

they were on lunch / wrong side of the building initially.

Here is what wikipedia says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre#Police_response_11:22_a.m.

Police response 11:22 a.m.

At 11:22, the custodian called Deputy Neil Gardner on the school radio, requesting assistance in the Senior parking lot. The only paved route took him around the school to the east and south on Pierce Street, where, at 11:23 he heard on his police radio that a female was down, struck by a car, he assumed. He turned on his lights and siren. While exiting his patrol car in the Senior lot at 11:24, he heard another call on the school radio, "Neil, there's a shooter in the school".[23] Harris, at the West Entrance, immediately fired his rifle at Gardner, who was sixty yards away.[23] Gardner returned fire with his service pistol.[31] He was not wearing his prescription eyeglasses, and was unable to hit the shooters.[32]

Thus, five minutes after the shooting started, and two minutes after the first radio call, Gardner was engaged in a gun fight with the student shooters. There were already two dead and ten wounded. Harris fired ten shots and Gardner fired four, before Harris ducked back into the building. No one was hit. Gardner reported on his police radio, "Shots in the building. I need someone in the south lot with me."[23]

The gunfight distracted Harris and Klebold from the injured Brian Anderson.[4] Anderson escaped to the library and hid inside an open staff break room. Back in the school, the duo moved along the main North Hallway, throwing pipe bombs and shooting at anyone they encountered. They shot Stephanie Munson in the ankle, although she was able to walk out of the school. The pair shot out the windows to the East Entrance of the school. After proceeding through the hall several times and shooting toward—and missing—any students they saw, Harris and Klebold went toward the West Entrance and turned into the Library Hallway.

Deputy Paul Smoker, a motorcycle patrolman for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, was writing a traffic ticket north of the school when the "female down" call came in at 11:23. Taking the shortest route, he drove his motorcycle over grass between the athletic fields and headed toward the West Entrance. When he saw Deputy Scott Taborsky following him in a patrol car, he abandoned his motorcycle for the safety of the car. The two deputies had begun to rescue two wounded students near the ball fields when another gunfight broke out at 11:26, between Harris, back at the West Entrance, and Gardner, still in the parking lot. Deputy Smoker returned fire from the hilltop, and Harris retreated. Again, no one was hit.[24]

Is it possible you didn't mean to respond to the original post?

[DrDan]

28. so armed security is the only solution?

[Bay Boy]

34. I don't know...

...because we have no way of knowing.

Would an armed guard at Sandy Hook have prevented the tragedy? Or would the kid have
just gone to a different school and committed his crime?

There is no reason to think that armed guards or teachers could prevent all mass shootings in the future.
But would they stop some percentage? I would have to think so. But, as some say, there would eventually be an instance of the armed person being responsible for a student death through some act of negligence. So what trade off would you be willing to make?

[DrDan]

36. our efforts should be focussed on keeping a shooter from getting close to a school

not a John Wayne saving-the-school-marm solution. It seems extremely impractical to expect one lone-security person to deal with a shooter who has the advantage of timing, planning, etc.

Lets keep the shooters away from guns to begin with - or restrict the type of weapon they can get their hands on. Lets "nip it in the bud" . . . or at least throw our efforts in that direction.

[Paladin]

30. I'm very concerned about it, but I don't think schools should become armed camps. (nt)

[Myrina]

32. Wasn't particularly worried but now that IN has approved armed guards in schools ...

.... I know something stupidly disastrous is going to happen, probably sooner than later.

[One_Life_To_Give]

37. Elementary not, High Schools more problematic

If you have gun violence in the neighborhood. Then yes it's likely working it's way into the high school and is an issue that needs to be addressed. At the elementary level any event is tragic but exceedingly rare. What you would spend putting a police officer or armed guard into each Elementary School would accomplish many more lives saved if spent ensuring Children used Auto-Safety/booster seats.
What better uses could we envision for a annual expense of $100 per child?

[get the red out]

38. I am concerned with violence in our society

The schools are just one segment of that.

[NCTraveler]

39. Things like Sandy Hook are statistically insignificant.

It is not insignificant to the parents, friends, family, and those who will be scarred for life from the tragedy. When we look at Sandy Hook, the numbers counted for statistics that show how rare it is, should not be what is concentrated on. Reality shows us that a whole community, and many outside of that community, have been severely hurt. This very rare event had an direct effect on thousands of people.

Gun violence happens every day. Many want to concentrate on the statistic counting the individual(s) harmed or killed. The devastating effects go much further than that. So, while Sandy Hook like shootings are statistically insignificant, the effects of gun violence are not. The government needs to look at methods of protecting its citizens. People concentrating on one idea for that protection seem to be derailing a larger conversation. While I do not agree with armed persons in schools, at least the conversation is happening. This won't be the first bad idea thrown out there.

[aikoaiko]

40. Not too worried, but I'm very OK with reasonable precautions

these include higher grade doors and entry points, panic buttons in rooms, gun shot detectors, violence prevention programs, and yes even well-trained armed security guards.

I went to an affluent and successful high school in the 1980s where we had an armed guard. It wasn't a big deal even in NJ.

[Avalux]

41. What about daycare centers?

All the focus is on public schools; however the same type of scenario could occur at a private school, daycare center, or any place where large numbers of children/people are amassed. It would be IMPOSSIBLE to guard everyone, and it would be harmful to society.

Just because a Sandy Hook event COULD happen again, doesn't mean we need to be hypervigilant with armed security. Those who think we should are foolishly buying into Dick Cheney's one percent doctrine - going overboard due to a "low-probability, high-impact event".

[Tikki]

43. A bit...have grandchildren in schools...

The preschool teachers just related their hide for safety drill that the little ones
did Monday.
The teachers said it went really well and only used the words 'safety drill' with the students.

My grandchild in elementary school has earthquake and other safety drills, often.
We have, also, spoken at home to the grandchildren on how to listen and react to teachers when they
implement the safety drills.

The Tikkis

ps...we had 'BOMBING' drills when we were in school...out to the hallway, hug the bottom of the wall
and cover our heads and necks.