Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Natalie on December 16, 2012 at 1:49am

 To each their own I suppose....and yes I'm serious.
In fact there was a pretty good example of this on my last day of high school back in 2003.
Ten minuets before the last bell rang to let us go, my school went on lock down because someone reported that a gun was on campus. We stayed till a false alarm was reported over the intercom. As we later found out, a kid had made a rubber band gun in shop out of wood. He was just collecting it out of his shop locker to take it home. So, someone saw it told the teacher, who told the office. I don't' know what happened other than that but the police were all over the campus when we left our rooms. The point is they got the school in lock down fast and no one was going anywhere unless they wanted you to.

Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on December 16, 2012 at 12:43pm

I am old enough to remember when schools never went on lock down (no one even knew what the phrase meant), and we actually walked to school, because there wasn't this insane paranoia about child abductions.   (They aren't any more common than they used to be, but now you hear about every one that happens nationwide.)

Permalink Reply by kOrsan on December 16, 2012 at 12:48pm

(They aren't any more common than they used to be, but now you hear about every one that happens nationwide.)

It's the fear commerce in the media.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on December 16, 2012 at 3:28pm

Don't blame the media. The media watch the viewer statistics like hounds. If people switched their TV's off during this coverage, the coverage would be cut way back. 

Personally, after the first day I reacquainted myself with Pandora, even though I normally am a guy who works with CNN running. When there are more people like me, they'll stop covering it so much, but not before.

Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on December 16, 2012 at 5:19pm

RE: "When there are more people like me" - (shudder!)

Permalink Reply by James Cox on December 16, 2012 at 11:22pm

Yes, spending more money we don't have in the hope of creating a tragedy, here we go again!

Permalink Reply by Unseen on December 16, 2012 at 10:19am

In short, he shot his way in and virtually no school is prepared to stop that kind of intrusion, unless you want schools to be fortified like a branch of the Federal Reserve (which 99% of school districts could never afford). This is why you need to give up on a perimeter defense for intrusions like this and have some sort of plan after intrusion. This school had no defenses, and most schools don't. A perimeter defense might work against people who want to come in for nefarious but non-lethal reasons.

Of course, the other option is to throw in the towel and say "Shit happens. You can't defend against everything," which is probably what will end up happening. Like I said elsewhere, these things may be happening more, but the losses are so small (several dozen people in a year from mass killings) that the rate of deaths in this country of 315 million is pretty close to 0.000. Of course, that's no comfort.

As for those who are pushing for stopping these killings by turning in people who are acting weird, obsessed with death, etc., most of us are simply not going to do that to a friend, and parents are likely to be in denial. Also, in many cases, they are asymptomatic, keeping their thoughts and obsessions to themselves.

Permalink Reply by onyango makagutu on December 15, 2012 at 1:34am

To have this in perspective, how many such gun incidences do we have in Switzerland. Here is a report about the Swiss who have more guns in the population than I think the US but violent is so low they don't keep records of it.

I think, the solution to the American problem is not have more people having guns, but to have less people with guns. Would armed guards have reduced the death toll, maybe depending on how fast they responded and whether there was a protracted gun battle or not because then you can't tell where the bullets would land.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on December 15, 2012 at 10:35am

But, clearly, those having less guns would be those who (a) obey the law and (b) those who don't feel a serious want or need to have one. This will just leave guns in the hands of the wrong people.

Permalink Reply by onyango makagutu on December 16, 2012 at 12:28am

Unfortunately the bad guys will always have the means to acquire guns. The best is to find a way of ensuring that people are disposessed of their guns

Permalink Reply by Becca on December 15, 2012 at 2:31am

Guns create more problems than they solve. If you wish to own a gun then you should at the very least have to go through a similar process to that of getting a drivers license.

Permalink Reply by Ed on December 15, 2012 at 9:54am

The tens of millions of law abiding gun owners in America would disagree. Guns in the hands of deranged unstable people are the problem. 

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