Has a Columbine-type campus attack ever been stopped before someone got hurt?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

I mean, once the attacker or first attacker was spotted with his gun out in the open.

Since the NIU attack, a lot of schools around here have to come up with a safety plan and I'm just wondering what realistically can be done to intervene.

[flvegan]

1. Realistically? Arm all the teachers, students, faculty, vendors and parents.

Turn the gymnasium into a firing range, mandatory practice each day after lunch.

Maximum firepower!!11!

Do I need the sarcasm smilie?

[stillcool]

2. There have been a shit load..

of weapons confiscated in schools. Who knows when a person is going to go off?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

3. I mean stopped after the point one could say the attack is in progress but

no bodies have hit the ground yet.

[slackmaster]

4. I think the expectation of having nobody hit is not reasonable

Many such events in progress have been stopped by people who intervened.

[2KS2KHonda]

7. What about bodies whose fall is interrupted by desks?

:shrug:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

10. You're not funny.

At all.

[JonQ]

5. Couldn't tell you.

but given that schools are gun-free it seems unlikely anyone would be in a position to stop a deranged shooter.

Of course that's not to imply that possessing firearms can deter crimes, that's why there are as many fatal shootings at gun ranges, police stations, and military bases as there are in schools, post offices, and liquor stores. ; )

[2KS2KHonda]

6. That will pass about 9 thousand feet over the grabbers' heads.

:shrug:

[Rocknrule]

8. I may have actually prevented a school shooting once

I was looking up "Kent State massacre" on Wikipedia (incidentally, the day before its 37th anniversary) and someone changed "Kent State" to the name of their high school and changed the year of the shooting to 2007. Even though the school was several states away, I looked it up on the net, called them, and left an anonymous report of what I saw, which I felt was a tangible threat against the school. Obviously, nothing ended up happening, thank God.

[Posteritatis]

9. We rarely hear about the crimes that don't happen

It's part of the reason reporting of the ones that do is so hysterical half the time. Would I be willing to bet that there were a number that didn't happen where someone brought a gun to school and a friend (or teacher, etc) talked them down before anything happened, and it wasn't shouted to the rooftops by national news? Where someone showed up with something less drastic, a knife say, and was restrained or otherwise dealt with before things got bad? Certainly.

The problem is that stuff like that doesn't play as well on the news, so we'd never hear about it if it did.

[benEzra]

11. Exactly. (n/t)