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Every principal's office should have a instant open (biometric and push button pattern, as well as slower methods) safe with a few easy to use carbines (short r
by hga 11y ago
Every principal's office should have a instant open (biometric and push button pattern, as well as slower methods) safe with a few easy to use carbines (short rifles) with optical sights.
To take one of many examples, yet another autistic shooter who seems to fit at least some of the patterns in this, the administrators and teachers at Sandy Hook were entirely willing to die to protect their charges (per the official story). Which did neither of those groups any good.
Somehow, though, this sort of thing is "unthinkable". Just as school shootings were unthinkable in my father's days, when in the late '40s/early '50s lots of kids took a gun to school and stored it in their locker, to save an extra trip for before or after school hunting. Only a few years younger than my father Supreme Court Justice Scalia related in the Heller oral arguments that he would carry his .22 target rifle on the NYC subways to and from the range.
Various things have changed since then, and in this area nothing good.
- saltedshiv 11y agoI don't even know how to begin to search for sources about "when in the late '40's/early '50s lots of kids took a gun to school and stored it in their locker..." I'm not questioning your own validity, I'd just love to know how pervasive this was and where it was happening. I was able to find references about Justice Scalia in the Heller arguments.
- hga 11y agoWell, you should be able to find references to kids that continued this sort of thing, storing them in their vehicles, who got sweep up in the post-Columbine zero-tolerance bullshit. I know I read more than a few of those, and to this day kids still accidentally forget and leave their hunting gun in their vehicle and get punished. I have no idea of how pervasive it was outside of Joplin (MO) High School in that period, but given that Joplin is somewhat urban, with a population of 39,000 then, I'd expect it to be very widespread when you add more rural districts.
- nkurz 11y agoI'd guess was fairly common in the rural US anywhere that an after-school hunting trip was common. This has probably always been a relatively small but non-zero percentage. I wouldn't be surprised if it still occurs in some communities. Anecdotally, growing up in Northern Wisconsin in the 1980's, storing guns in lockers would not have acceptable, but this was a non-issue because many students drove themselves to school and would keep their hunting guns in their car rather than bringing them inside. It's possible this it was officially forbidden to have a gun in the car on school property, but in the absence of other circumstances wouldn't have been any cause for concern.
- bloodorange 11y agoI find it hard to imagine that one will see less of these incidents with even more guns around. Incidents like this are not common in developed nations.
- hga 11y agoIncidents like this are not common in developed nations. You mean like those comprising Western Europe, and, say, include Canada to pile it on? The former has had more of them in recent decades than the US. Here's the detailed accounting I did for Western Europe 2+ years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4970408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4970408 and with more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5070201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5070201 Wikipedia seems to have rearranged their previous lists that made this a lot more clear, but see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_de... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Notable_school_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Notable_school... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers#School_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers#School...