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Topic ClosedAs gun control is not possible...

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Poll Question: Is it time to fortify schools in the US?
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twseel View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 08 2018 at 09:26
^I can understand the need for protection on that level but pragmatically one can wonder if it isn't a waste to have a trained professional sit still at a school entrance to prevent something that is expected to happen on average about once in 200 years for that particular school (?), instead of patrolling and trying to stop other less significant but way more common issues.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 08 2018 at 10:39
Originally posted by twseel twseel wrote:

^I can understand the need for protection on that level but pragmatically one can wonder if it isn't a waste to have a trained professional sit still at a school entrance to prevent something that is expected to happen on average about once in 200 years for that particular school (?), instead of patrolling and trying to stop other less significant but way more common issues.

Well, and you probably will never be hit by a drunk driver or be run over by a bus or die in an airline accident, as well as go to a concert and be shot at. 
Yes the chances are slim to none....tell that to the parents that lost their kids. No parent should bury their child.

Police common issues, agree. But how many times is a police office going to arrest the person carrying weed in the mall, or pull over the same guy for speeding or go to the same house on Saturday night for playing music too loud.
If police presence stops one gunman from shooting up a bunch of kids over a 200 yr span.......well.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2018 at 02:37
Well that's still slanted, security in those places (in your first sentence) is a lot more active, fast and has more roles, for example in making people feel safe. These are also situations where security almost certainly is blocking the threats when they occur, while a policeman in front of a school won't even be of any help if the shooter comes in through another door or a window, or when the shooter gets a surprise shot at the officer (it's not realistic that a policeman is ready to pull a gun extremely rapidly 8 hours a day), or when the shooter instead decides to wait around the corner or go to some other place where the children usually come, and on top of that I think having a policeman at the entrance of the school will generally make children feel anxious and less safe rather than more safe (a known effect of police presence), which would also be a pity. I'm not completely opposed to the idea, but what about if you just give the principal's office a view at the entrance, like having it right next to the entrance, and giving him a gun to leave next to his desk in case of emergency?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2018 at 02:44
What it seems to keep coming back to is indeed access to guns:  not mental illness, not angry people or criminal behavior (which is not controllable anyway).

Americans are addicted to liberties, real and perceived, and like anything else, too much of something is never good.


"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2018 at 03:11
How about making the schools more like prisons? That way you would only have to strip the kids of their weapons once, and with a thorough enough body search it would be very unlikely for guns to end up on the premises.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2018 at 11:20
Originally posted by twseel twseel wrote:

Well that's still slanted, security in those places (in your first sentence) is a lot more active, fast and has more roles, for example in making people feel safe. These are also situations where security almost certainly is blocking the threats when they occur, while a policeman in front of a school won't even be of any help if the shooter comes in through another door or a window, or when the shooter gets a surprise shot at the officer (it's not realistic that a policeman is ready to pull a gun extremely rapidly 8 hours a day), or when the shooter instead decides to wait around the corner or go to some other place where the children usually come, and on top of that I think having a policeman at the entrance of the school will generally make children feel anxious and less safe rather than more safe (a known effect of police presence), which would also be a pity. I'm not completely opposed to the idea, but what about if you just give the principal's office a view at the entrance, like having it right next to the entrance, and giving him a gun to leave next to his desk in case of emergency?

In general we are on the same page.....protecting the kids. My point about what the status of local police do, what they police can be changed. They should be present at all schools, there is very little to no argument as why they should not. Police are to Serve And Protect, their community, which includes schools and children.

If a person can enter a school thru a side door/window then that is a design flaw, fix it. All doors should be locked from the outside. Can you enter your local bank from a back or side door? I seriously doubt it. 

I think the majority of kids feel/think seeing the police is a cool thing, seeing their cruiser with all the lights and a laptop inside a car.....Nothing is 100%, but the right thing to do is for local authorities to protect our children at school, this is not a Wash DC thing. It should be each state capitol mandating the local police to revise patrol schedules to do such, my tax money pays for those police depts.

Children feel more anxious at school because of other kids, bullying and online bullying.

Gun control is an issue too, nobody who wants to buy a gun needs it tomorrow. The process to buy one should be a 30-60 day process to allow a full background check. You should not be able to go to a gun show and buy a gun and walk out with it.

If you have 10 DUIs, you can walk into a car dealership and buy a car and drive it off the lot within 2 hours.....a 3,500lb weapon. So yea, buying guns needs to be revised but that is going to take a long time and serious debate. Same as applying a "mental health" issue to gun ownership, define "mental health"? Someone who has been committed to hospital? Someone who was prescribed depression medication? That's probably 80% of the population, it will never hold up.
Guys we have serious mental health issues in the police dept, military, FBI, state troopers...so those people should not have a gun??
Protecting our kids at the local level is the right thing to do, not doing it is wrong. Any other solutions will take way too much time and debate, still needs to happen.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 10 2018 at 14:52
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:

Originally posted by twseel twseel wrote:

Well that's still slanted, security in those places (in your first sentence) is a lot more active, fast and has more roles, for example in making people feel safe. These are also situations where security almost certainly is blocking the threats when they occur, while a policeman in front of a school won't even be of any help if the shooter comes in through another door or a window, or when the shooter gets a surprise shot at the officer (it's not realistic that a policeman is ready to pull a gun extremely rapidly 8 hours a day), or when the shooter instead decides to wait around the corner or go to some other place where the children usually come, and on top of that I think having a policeman at the entrance of the school will generally make children feel anxious and less safe rather than more safe (a known effect of police presence), which would also be a pity. I'm not completely opposed to the idea, but what about if you just give the principal's office a view at the entrance, like having it right next to the entrance, and giving him a gun to leave next to his desk in case of emergency?

In general we are on the same page.....protecting the kids. My point about what the status of local police do, what they police can be changed. They should be present at all schools, there is very little to no argument as why they should not. Police are to Serve And Protect, their community, which includes schools and children.
They should, yes, but that includes an extremely wide range of contexts. You really think there might be NO argument against your suggestion?
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:


If a person can enter a school thru a side door/window then that is a design flaw, fix it. All doors should be locked from the outside. Can you enter your local bank from a back or side door? I seriously doubt it. 
Many schools I know have exits to areas for leisure behind the schools for example, and there are of course a sh*tload of windows which, even if the openings have to be made smaller, could easily be broken by someone with any kind of gun. Why would a shooter not pick this option if there's a cop at the door?
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:


I think the majority of kids feel/think seeing the police is a cool thing, seeing their cruiser with all the lights and a laptop inside a car.....Nothing is 100%, but the right thing to do is for local authorities to protect our children at school, this is not a Wash DC thing. It should be each state capitol mandating the local police to revise patrol schedules to do such, my tax money pays for those police depts.
Do you have any idea how much extra tax money needs to be raised to organize full-time manned protection at every school? Meanwhile children sitting in class are very unlikely to be committing crimes so even other activities within the school would be a relative time waste. And surely they won't be showing off their car to all the kids habitually, instead they will simply be walking around and any cool will quickly be replaced by the discomfort of gettin watched by an armed man.
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:


Children feel more anxious at school because of other kids, bullying and online bullying.
This is irrelevant, they can still get anxious about police surveillance anyways, though maybe not as much.
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:


Gun control is an issue too, nobody who wants to buy a gun needs it tomorrow. The process to buy one should be a 30-60 day process to allow a full background check. You should not be able to go to a gun show and buy a gun and walk out with it.
True.
Originally posted by Catcher10 Catcher10 wrote:


If you have 10 DUIs, you can walk into a car dealership and buy a car and drive it off the lot within 2 hours.....a 3,500lb weapon. So yea, buying guns needs to be revised but that is going to take a long time and serious debate. Same as applying a "mental health" issue to gun ownership, define "mental health"? Someone who has been committed to hospital? Someone who was prescribed depression medication? That's probably 80% of the population, it will never hold up.
Guys we have serious mental health issues in the police dept, military, FBI, state troopers...so those people should not have a gun??
Protecting our kids at the local level is the right thing to do, not doing it is wrong. Any other solutions will take way too much time and debate, still needs to happen.
'Mental health' is a wide umbrella with many more specific subdivisions. An important hint may be that a lot of earlier school shooters were seeing a psychiatrist, some were severely depressed, some schizophrenic. No-one says anyone with mild issues should be discredited, but there are very clear limits in terms of certain diagnoses or medicines that can be set to limit the risk of shootings and the like.
I'm not sure how we're supposed to protect kids 'at national level' instead of local if that's what you imply, but yeah, ideally the local police would be in touch with the community, know the risks, know the children and they would be able to be at the scene as quickly as possible when it does go wrong, but that could be done a lot more realistically.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 10 2018 at 21:45
I really don't care what the tax money needed to do this is......We are taxed for many more things that never get done anyhow. A 3-5 cent gas tax will probably raise more than enough money, or sales tax increase or property tax. If a few extra 100 $$ a year for a household is too much then you win the argument and nothing should be done or will be done....status quo, and our children will continue to be un-protected in some of our schools and cities.....I say put it to a vote, let the people decide.

There is NO argument for not protecting our kids. It's not a Wash DC/Administration thing to handle this issue 100%, the majority is local govt issues. DC can help and/or encourage and probably mandate money be spent to help, which we pay for anyhow. Money is not the issue nor the deterent, people are.

My point about the mental health is that will never be addressed, to your point the umbrella is wide and will be beyond out lifetime in "making laws to address that". Every big city in the world has a population of mental health patients that are freely walking the streets, some causing major problems and others just trying to live day to day....That will never change.

The school building access issue is fixable, you can make the schools more secure, it is does each city chose to? We cannot not do that just because we think a shooter might climb thru an airduct or down the chimney or pretend to be a teacher or whatever. Again.....I have to take off my shoes to get on a plane nowadays. Airport security was flipped on its head and completely revamped, why can't we do the same at schools?

I'm open to any suggestions that can be done quickly, but guns will not go away. Please do not think gun control is the answer, some things need to change on gun control but many more things can be done more quickly.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 11 2018 at 08:04
A few extra 100$ a year means for some family that the children will have to give up their hobby to save this money, I'sd say it's a considerable price for such a half-assed plan. Btw, you said you saw little to no arguments against this plan, not 'protecting our children', why the hell would I be arguing against that?
Yes people with mental health problems go untreated sometimes, but that's irrelevant since we already know that some school shooters WERE getting treatment and were still allowed to get a gun, which would be a very easy fix if the government would choose for it.
Finally, you can't protect a school like a bank because a safe in a bank doesn't have thousands of people walking in and out every day and it doesn't need windows, and you can't control it like an airport since the controls at airports patiently continue all throughout the day while a school needs to cram in all those people at once at the start of the day. And I seriously wonder how you want to secure a window, if you want kids to be able to get fresh air and look outside you will inadvertently have windows that can be easily broken into. It's a school, not a military base.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 12 2018 at 15:12
Thanks....but I'm done. As usual nothing will get done, too much complaining and not enough ideas being thrown out.
An idea is better than nothing.....I've had 4 kids go thru pre-k thru HS. Schools can be made safe.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2018 at 14:11
It seems to me that protecting schools would be a matter of having only one way in or out...and having codes to control those doors....and then have an armed guard on duty at that area. If the only way in was protected by a guard and everyone was checked before they came in....wouldn't that stop most if not all of these attacks?

Of course that wouldn't stop someone out front after school was let out but at least they couldn't get in the building.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2018 at 14:19
Except for the windows, right? Could you imagine a school building with one door and no windows?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2018 at 14:33
When one the last time someone shot people through the windows...that seems not a viable means of access to me. All of the ones that have happened have been a shooter walking in through the 'front door 'for the most part. Or am I mistaken...?

As an example the local high school where I'm at has all doors locked other than the front door....so if you ck everyone out....how did this kid just walk right in at the Florida school...?


Edited by dr wu23 - March 13 2018 at 14:36
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2018 at 14:50
One way in & out = you're trapped if that point of egress is blocked.  Building codes prevent such a thing (for good reason).  In larger public/populated facilities, you need to have multiple options for egress in case of fire, not to mention other threats, such as lunatic shooters.  There's also that whole problem of getting trampled to death, when large numbers of people are desperately trying to reach that one door...

Of course, if there is only one door, and the killer takes out the armed guard "protecting" it... now there'll be a massacre on a much higher scale.

That whole one door thing won't work.

   


Edited by ProfPanglos - March 13 2018 at 14:58
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2018 at 16:32
Originally posted by dr wu23 dr wu23 wrote:

When one the last time someone shot people through the windows...that seems not a viable means of access to me. All of the ones that have happened have been a shooter walking in through the 'front door 'for the most part. Or am I mistaken...
Well of course, why would they should people through windows if the doors aren't guarded yet? It's just that as soon as they are, windows are an easy way to get in, if they're not open already you can shoot through one or use a bat or something but if someone really wants to get in it's viable.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2018 at 22:08
To Panglos...
No...all access in is blocked/locked but not when going out......not sure what you are talking about...have you been in a school lately??
The one main door in is a rule in all schools that I know of. You cannot get in through any side or back door. If you require a valid id and frisk ,etc no one wrong gets in. This kid simply walked in the front door apparently.

As far as I know no one has ever used windows to shoot or gain access to ...so it must not be all that viable.



Edited by dr wu23 - March 13 2018 at 22:13
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 14 2018 at 02:59
You're repeating your post like you haven't read mine, there is absoltely no reason shooters would have entered through windows before now because at least up to now they could simply choose to walk through the front door, and when you make it impossible to enter through the front door a shooter is not a mindless zombie, he can realize that he could also very easily enter through a window, which he would then do. Why would you ignore this risk if you want to protect our children, ay? If you want armed protection so badly, I'd recommend, what I said earlier, put the principal's office at the entrance and give him a gun to keep there, then give the teachers an emergency gun in a safe, fortify all the windows that lead into the hallways (as much as that would suck) and make sure that classrooms which are not in use don't offer easy access into the hallways.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 14 2018 at 10:53
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 14 2018 at 22:01
I personally don't see a problem with having metal detectors or even a security guard. The argument against the metal detectors is it will hold up the students and outside while waiting in line to go through the metal detector is where another shooting will occur. I'm not buying it though. The other option is to just hire security guards. To me this is better than nothing but will make the school feel more like a prison. On the other hand it might deter bullying as a side effect which is fine by me.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 16 2018 at 19:50
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

What it seems to keep coming back to is indeed access to guns:  not mental illness, not angry people or criminal behavior (which is not controllable anyway).

Americans are addicted to liberties, real and perceived, and like anything else, too much of something is never good.


I agree. The mentally ill are more likely to be victims than perpetrators.
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