4 ms·

The panicked, reckless nonsense of "active shooter drills" is eventually going to get someone actually killed. (Compare: the DEA agent who shot himself while t

• scott_s 8y ago
  Some of the ones which are done during the school day, involving students, sound horrific: Active-Shooter Drills Are Tragically Misguided, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/active-shooter-drills-erika-christakis/580426/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/active-...
  • AWildC182 8y ago
    This feels like a weird thing to say but exposing students (or anyone) to this seems like a really bad idea. By letting them experience that kind of terror, I feel it may give anyone with sociopathic tendencies 'ideas' and may influence them to seek that kind of control over others. We're all just the sum of our experiences and giving young impressionable kids terrifying experiences in the pursuit of protecting them from something that is statistically incredibly unlikely seems like a good way to make it statistically less incredibly unlikely.
    • gumby 8y ago
      I believe terrorizing the population into compliance is the point. I don't think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that.
      • TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
        This puts the terrorist and the government firmly on the same side. Wasn't that the terrorists intention all along?
        • gumby 8y ago
          each depends on the other.
      • blattimwind 8y ago
        Obey & Survive
    • jka 8y ago
      It's not weird to say; that assessment makes sense to me and I'm fairly sure it would to others as well. Sociopathic kids will use the events and memories from the drills as triggers to intimidate and remind their peers of the threat - or as you say, even further as inspiration for actual attacks. And I'd be willing to bet there are some unusual psychological characteristics of the folks who perform these drills and arrange them - does a normal-minded person really want to teach others what it's like to live in threat of imminent death? All of this time and money should go to reducing the possibility of shootings occurring in the first place, and reducing the cycles of hurt which lead to them, rather than re-enacting and normalizing them.
      • dashundchen 8y ago
        Anecdotal but the mentality and culture of those I know who work in law enforcement in the US is quite frightening. Referring to fellow citizens as civilians as if they were separate from them, obsessions with guns and military equipment, and maybe most visibly telling, mixing "blue line" symbols with things like "The Punisher" logo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punisher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punisher > The character is an Italian-American[4][5] vigilante who employs murder, kidnapping, extortion, coercion, threats of violence, and torture in his campaign against crime. Driven by the deaths of his wife and two children who were killed by the mob for witnessing a killing in New York City's Central Park, the Punisher wages a one-man war on the mob and all violent criminals in general while employing the use of various firearms.[6] His family's killers were the first to be slain.[7] A war veteran and a United States Marine Corps Scout Sniper, Castle is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, guerrilla warfare, and marksmanship.[4][5] > The Punisher's brutal nature and willingness to kill made him a novel character in mainstream American comic books when he debuted in 1974. By the late 1980s, the Punisher was part of a wave of psychologically-troubled antiheroes.
• koolba 8y ago
  Why the hell is the gun loaded?!
  • AWildC182 8y ago
    Why was it even real? It's a school. If you really need to do demonstrations, get a plastic prop gun.
    • hippich 8y ago
      I think it was the best kind of demonstration how dangerous guns are, that even DEA agent managed to literally shoot himself in the foot. I only hope it was not done on purpose.
      • wl 8y ago
        It's not as if the pistol malfunctioned. If the agent had kept his booger hook off the bang switch, everything would have been fine.
    • marzell 8y ago
      Reminds me of DARE when they'd show a vial of crack. A picture would have been sufficient.
  • wl 8y ago
    He probably carries a pistol with him everywhere and standard practice is to keep it loaded with a round chambered. If demonstrating safe handling were necessary, he probably should have brought another pistol and kept his carry weapon holstered. In any case, he should have cleared the weapon before his demonstration and kept it pointed in a safe direction.
• ronsor 8y ago
  That is terribly ironic. Why did he use a loaded gun again.
• Balgair 8y ago
  Related, about 1 month after Parkland: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/14/593531945/gun-trained-teacher-accidentally-shoots-gun-in-calif-high-school-classroom https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/14/593531945... "A 17-year-old student was struck in the neck, according to his father, Fermin Gonzales III, who spoke to Monterey County Weekly. "He was going to go to his next class, but he was pulling out metal fragments," Gonzales said of his son. "It was a soft metal." "Nobody from the office came in and looked at what had happened," he alleged." (Struck in the neck from shrapnel, fyi) "In a series of tweets, he (Donny) said, "20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to ... immediately fire back if a savage sicko came to a school with bad intentions ... Far more assets at much less cost than guards. A 'gun free' school is a magnet for bad people. ATTACKS WOULD END!""