5 ms·

When i was in grade school some 20 years ago now we had the same issue but it was bomb threats back then.

gs17 3y ago
Same, we even had one where IIRC it was just that someone wrote "the bomb goes off at 3:00" in a bathroom an unknown number of days before they noticed. I think they made us turn in handwriting samples.
- sixothree 3y ago
  The gall of that, especially at a time when all you did all day every day is turn in handwriting samples.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    You would think they'd want the prior samples so the attacker doesn't change their writing for the sample. Or perhaps they could more easily identify it by comparing the samples to the prior samples and looking for who is disguising their style?
estebank 3y ago
The thing that I don't get is that when I was growing up on Argentina, I never saw anything like that. We heard about the shootings and bomb threats in the US, but once a teacher got stabbed in an Argentinean school and was national news. And that was the biggest event in years. Why do these kind of things only seem to be prevalent on one country? Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well. People blame guns exclusively, but I think the real causes are: 1. Some kind of societal dysfunction that's leading deeper levels of anger and isolation in some people. 2. Massive national advertising campaigns by the media reminding angry, isolated teenagers that shooting up their school is an option they have.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    I have not seen #2. Enlighten me?
    - tivert 3y ago
      > I have not seen #2. Enlighten me? You have. It's all the wall-to-wall publicity the shootings get. #2 might have a connection to the popularization of 24-hour news channels, which experience a huge pressure to fill air time with something.
      - estebank 3y ago
        American school shootings are news across the world. Why doesn that copy cat effect affect other countries?
        omginternets 3y ago
        To be fair, in the European countries I've visited, the media coverage is less sensational, and less relentless. That said, I do agree the gp's explanation is simplistic. There's clearly some kind of quest for transcendence involved in school shootings (not unlike e.g. Islamic terrorism); recognition for the act is definitely one element of that, but I think there's got to be more.
        giantg2 3y ago
        To some degree it might. There are some instances of school attacks in other countries. I would guess that socioeconomic factors are a main driver in lower school violence levels in other countries. Even within the US, socioeconomic factors are main factors in localized variances. I would also guess that media coverage is much different in other countries, where the event is reported without being sensationalized and without constant coverage for days or weeks on end.
        tivert 3y ago
        > American school shootings are news across the world. Why doesn that copy cat effect affect other countries? I doubt they're covered to the same degree as in America (e.g. CNN reiterating every detail, over and over, for days). I don't think America would have the school shooting problem is has if they were covered to the same degree as, say, Indian gang rapes are covered.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  It's a social contagion thing. A place or country that has never had such a thing happen might well go for decades with it continuing to "not happen". But if it starts happening, you get copy cat crimes. People who were apparently too dim to think it up on their own are inspired by the first criminal act, and repeat it. These secondary acts inspire yet more of the same. If the rate gets high enough (likely passed that threshold decades ago), it becomes self-sustaining. It might even be how some riots boil up out of nowhere. Tends to happen alot with teen suicides too.
  - estebank 3y ago
    American school shootings are news across the world. Why doesn that copy cat effect affect other countries?
    - Auracle 3y ago
      They might be news, but I doubt that cover each shooting for weeks like they do here. The media practically makes some of the shooters into celebrities.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      The mechanisms are poorly understood, as far as I know.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  I don't think it's "Gun prevalence" per say. Decades ago, guns were even allowed in schools. As in, students could bring a gun to keep in their vehicle or even sometimes locker for use in after school activities like a hunters safety course, or various competitive shooting leagues.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Some schools still have shooting teams on school grounds. It was less than 20 years ago I knew students who would leave guns in their cars to later go hunting. It wasn't allowed, but nobody said anything and it was never a problem. I assume this still happens in some areas today.
    - Ancapistani 3y ago
      Yep. My daughter is a junior in high school, and on the trap team. She takes her cased shotgun to school with her once a week.
- themagician 3y ago
  There is an anger in the US that a lot of people don't understand, including most Americans (and myself). It is very, very multifaceted. There is no single cause. Everything from politics to car culture and the way our cities are designed promote a strange kind of anger. When I travel abroad, I don't see this… like, hardly at all.
- didntcheck 3y ago
  Similar experience in the UK. I'd never even heard of a "lockdown" until I read about them on the American internet. Though apparrently they do exist here now. Our gates were also usually wide open, and you could then enter the building by numerous doors (apparently there was no gate or fence at all until a few years before I started). And definitely no security personnel There is of course the notable exception of the Dunblane massacre in 1996, which effectively lead to a ban on handguns. AFAIK we haven't had any school shootings since then
omginternets 3y ago
Same here. After a while it became fun. “Class is canceled!”
- hackeraccount 3y ago
  When I was younger I worked at a restaurant and someone called in a bomb threat. Super fun. We all stood in parking lot looking at the build while we asked each other when it would blow up. I never did. As I remember the guy who called in the threat did it from a convenience store pay phone where a cop was parked. They said they caught him minutes after he made the call.
mdip 3y ago
For me it was the mid-90s and my sister the late 80s. She had school cancelled on final exam day due to a bomb threat. The first half of 11th Grade, for me, students were put in "lock down"[0] and then dismissed early due to a bomb threat. When I went to High School the doors were left unlocked during school hours. It was normal for past students to "pop in" during the school day or in the afternoon for social visits to teachers. We had hall monitors who would question why you were roaming the halls if you looked young enough to be a student but a simple "I graduated last year and stopped in to catch up with my programming teacher" was all that was required all but one time I stopped in (they made me get a pass from the office all of once). I'm not saying "it was safer this way" but I often wonder if the increased security -- sometimes approaching "prison security" -- has the side-effect of some segments of the population "behaving accordingly." There were school shootings "in my day" but those were limited to rough schools in the inner city. They were reported along-side all of the other crime happening "in the high-crime areas of the city", brushed off by most of us. Weapon policy was much more lax when I attended school. I routinely carried a 3.5" pocket knife to school because I was irritated with dullness of the various wire cutters/tools in my electronics class. My electronics teacher regularly borrowed my knife without questioning "why in the hell a HS student is bring what looks like a switch-blade to school" (I was always seen as "one of the good kids", though). We lived about ten miles from a large rural High School, as well. I remember picking up a cousin at his school around hunting season and being surprised, back then, to see pick-up trucks with gun racks proudly displaying scoped rifles in both the staff and student parking lots. This was, of course, "prior to Columbine" and I suspect they put a stop to that shortly thereafter. With news attention on school shootings and not bombs, it makes sense that hoaxes tend to focus in that direction. School shootings get a lot of coverage with the focus then usually shifting to legislation aimed at restricting gun ownership[1]. The issue is that it's caused people to identify "the problem" as "school shootings" rather than "mass casualty events." Bearing in mind that the perpetrators of these sorts of things are often of the mindset of "taking out as many people as possible while committing suicide", if it were actually possible to "ban all firearms" in the US, the problem would not be solved. As a High School kid who's parents do not/would never own a gun ... extremely conservative, yet pro-gun control parents[2] ... I had no access to a firearm and no clue how I would acquire one. However, the summer before my senior year in HS, myself and a few friends went off into the woods with a pipe bomb I had made out of things from my Dad's basement and "black powder" salvaged from Independence Day incendiaries. We wanted to make "the mother of all M-80s." The device was smaller than most handguns, easy to conceal and easy to ignite. It would have been devastating if exploded in a hallway. To this day I have never seen such a powerful explosion in person. "Fingers plugging ears" was not enough to prevent dampening of our hearing by 90% instantly. Despite being an "empty pipe bomb" (lots of "powder" but no screws/bolts/other shrapnel), pieces of it flew -- easily -- twice as far as the distance we were standing from it. Had any of us been positioned at the right angle there would have been no time to react and I have no doubt anyone in the direct path would have been killed/injured in a manner at least as seriously as if they'd taken a large caliber bullet. About the only solution I have heard that would make a difference is "more high schools with fewer students." The school I attended was designed with about a 750-total-student capacity in mind. My graduating class was 850. We were packed into hallways so tight that you basically squeezed your way to class with the running joke being that if you were too tired, just lift your feet off the ground and let everyone else take you there by force. Putting a high-trained police officer in that situation and asking them to "hit the shooter" would be practically impossible. Even assuming they hit the target, the bullet would travel through several other students before its settled into a wall/other sufficiently dense object capable of ending its journey. [0] Something we didn't drill for back then except for tornado drills. [1] Which, despite generally being a supporter of second amendment rights, I find myself supporting some of the more sensible approaches. Incidentally, I am not in support of "arming the teachers" -- the probability that adding another gun to the situation won't just result in more students being caught up in cross-fire isn't an adequate solution. [2] I live in a blue collar community that fits well into the category of "Reagan Democrats" -- so much so that until my late teens I had no idea Republicans were pro-gun and Democrats were anti-gun. Every Democrat I knew was a card carrying member of a union (usually one specific union) and every one of them had a firearm collection of a small militia. Nobody in my family/extended family -- all conservatives -- owned a firearm.
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Almost 30 years ago, I attended a college prep high school in Santa Clara County that allegedly removed all of the lockers because of pipe bomb explosions in the 1970's. The safety rationale was "lockers plus bombs equals shrapnel." The concrete footings for the lockers were still present throughout the school's outdoor halls. The campus was completely open and each classroom was a free-standing building.

gs17 3y ago

Same, we even had one where IIRC it was just that someone wrote "the bomb goes off at 3:00" in a bathroom an unknown number of days before they noticed. I think they made us turn in handwriting samples.

sixothree 3y ago
The gall of that, especially at a time when all you did all day every day is turn in handwriting samples.
- giantg2 3y ago
  You would think they'd want the prior samples so the attacker doesn't change their writing for the sample. Or perhaps they could more easily identify it by comparing the samples to the prior samples and looking for who is disguising their style?

estebank 3y ago

The thing that I don't get is that when I was growing up on Argentina, I never saw anything like that. We heard about the shootings and bomb threats in the US, but once a teacher got stabbed in an Argentinean school and was national news. And that was the biggest event in years. Why do these kind of things only seem to be prevalent on one country? Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well.

tivert 3y ago
> Gun prevalence explains the medium of choise these past 25 years, and one thing that needs to be tackled, but there seems to be other factors at play as well. People blame guns exclusively, but I think the real causes are: 1. Some kind of societal dysfunction that's leading deeper levels of anger and isolation in some people. 2. Massive national advertising campaigns by the media reminding angry, isolated teenagers that shooting up their school is an option they have.
- omginternets 3y ago
  I have not seen #2. Enlighten me?
  - tivert 3y ago
    > I have not seen #2. Enlighten me? You have. It's all the wall-to-wall publicity the shootings get. #2 might have a connection to the popularization of 24-hour news channels, which experience a huge pressure to fill air time with something.
    - estebank 3y ago
      American school shootings are news across the world. Why doesn that copy cat effect affect other countries?
      - omginternets 3y ago
        To be fair, in the European countries I've visited, the media coverage is less sensational, and less relentless. That said, I do agree the gp's explanation is simplistic. There's clearly some kind of quest for transcendence involved in school shootings (not unlike e.g. Islamic terrorism); recognition for the act is definitely one element of that, but I think there's got to be more.
      - giantg2 3y ago
        To some degree it might. There are some instances of school attacks in other countries. I would guess that socioeconomic factors are a main driver in lower school violence levels in other countries. Even within the US, socioeconomic factors are main factors in localized variances. I would also guess that media coverage is much different in other countries, where the event is reported without being sensationalized and without constant coverage for days or weeks on end.
      - tivert 3y ago
        > American school shootings are news across the world. Why doesn that copy cat effect affect other countries? I doubt they're covered to the same degree as in America (e.g. CNN reiterating every detail, over and over, for days). I don't think America would have the school shooting problem is has if they were covered to the same degree as, say, Indian gang rapes are covered.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
It's a social contagion thing. A place or country that has never had such a thing happen might well go for decades with it continuing to "not happen". But if it starts happening, you get copy cat crimes. People who were apparently too dim to think it up on their own are inspired by the first criminal act, and repeat it. These secondary acts inspire yet more of the same. If the rate gets high enough (likely passed that threshold decades ago), it becomes self-sustaining. It might even be how some riots boil up out of nowhere. Tends to happen alot with teen suicides too.
- estebank 3y ago
  American school shootings are news across the world. Why doesn that copy cat effect affect other countries?
  - Auracle 3y ago
    They might be news, but I doubt that cover each shooting for weeks like they do here. The media practically makes some of the shooters into celebrities.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    The mechanisms are poorly understood, as far as I know.
SirMaster 3y ago
I don't think it's "Gun prevalence" per say. Decades ago, guns were even allowed in schools. As in, students could bring a gun to keep in their vehicle or even sometimes locker for use in after school activities like a hunters safety course, or various competitive shooting leagues.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Some schools still have shooting teams on school grounds. It was less than 20 years ago I knew students who would leave guns in their cars to later go hunting. It wasn't allowed, but nobody said anything and it was never a problem. I assume this still happens in some areas today.
  - Ancapistani 3y ago
    Yep. My daughter is a junior in high school, and on the trap team. She takes her cased shotgun to school with her once a week.
themagician 3y ago
There is an anger in the US that a lot of people don't understand, including most Americans (and myself). It is very, very multifaceted. There is no single cause. Everything from politics to car culture and the way our cities are designed promote a strange kind of anger. When I travel abroad, I don't see this… like, hardly at all.
didntcheck 3y ago
Similar experience in the UK. I'd never even heard of a "lockdown" until I read about them on the American internet. Though apparrently they do exist here now. Our gates were also usually wide open, and you could then enter the building by numerous doors (apparently there was no gate or fence at all until a few years before I started). And definitely no security personnel There is of course the notable exception of the Dunblane massacre in 1996, which effectively lead to a ban on handguns. AFAIK we haven't had any school shootings since then

omginternets 3y ago

Same here. After a while it became fun. “Class is canceled!”

hackeraccount 3y ago
When I was younger I worked at a restaurant and someone called in a bomb threat. Super fun. We all stood in parking lot looking at the build while we asked each other when it would blow up. I never did. As I remember the guy who called in the threat did it from a convenience store pay phone where a cop was parked. They said they caught him minutes after he made the call.

mdip 3y ago

For me it was the mid-90s and my sister the late 80s. She had school cancelled on final exam day due to a bomb threat. The first half of 11th Grade, for me, students were put in "lock down"[0] and then dismissed early due to a bomb threat. When I went to High School the doors were left unlocked during school hours. It was normal for past students to "pop in" during the school day or in the afternoon for social visits to teachers. We had hall monitors who would question why you were roaming the halls if you looked young enough to be a student but a simple "I graduated last year and stopped in to catch up with my programming teacher" was all that was required all but one time I stopped in (they made me get a pass from the office all of once). I'm not saying "it was safer this way" but I often wonder if the increased security -- sometimes approaching "prison security" -- has the side-effect of some segments of the population "behaving accordingly." There were school shootings "in my day" but those were limited to rough schools in the inner city. They were reported along-side all of the other crime happening "in the high-crime areas of the city", brushed off by most of us. Weapon policy was much more lax when I attended school. I routinely carried a 3.5" pocket knife to school because I was irritated with dullness of the various wire cutters/tools in my electronics class. My electronics teacher regularly borrowed my knife without questioning "why in the hell a HS student is bring what looks like a switch-blade to school" (I was always seen as "one of the good kids", though). We lived about ten miles from a large rural High School, as well. I remember picking up a cousin at his school around hunting season and being surprised, back then, to see pick-up trucks with gun racks proudly displaying scoped rifles in both the staff and student parking lots. This was, of course, "prior to Columbine" and I suspect they put a stop to that shortly thereafter. With news attention on school shootings and not bombs, it makes sense that hoaxes tend to focus in that direction. School shootings get a lot of coverage with the focus then usually shifting to legislation aimed at restricting gun ownership[1]. The issue is that it's caused people to identify "the problem" as "school shootings" rather than "mass casualty events." Bearing in mind that the perpetrators of these sorts of things are often of the mindset of "taking out as many people as possible while committing suicide", if it were actually possible to "ban all firearms" in the US, the problem would not be solved. As a High School kid who's parents do not/would never own a gun ... extremely conservative, yet pro-gun control parents[2] ... I had no access to a firearm and no clue how I would acquire one. However, the summer before my senior year in HS, myself and a few friends went off into the woods with a pipe bomb I had made out of things from my Dad's basement and "black powder" salvaged from Independence Day incendiaries. We wanted to make "the mother of all M-80s." The device was smaller than most handguns, easy to conceal and easy to ignite. It would have been devastating if exploded in a hallway. To this day I have never seen such a powerful explosion in person. "Fingers plugging ears" was not enough to prevent dampening of our hearing by 90% instantly. Despite being an "empty pipe bomb" (lots of "powder" but no screws/bolts/other shrapnel), pieces of it flew -- easily -- twice as far as the distance we were standing from it. Had any of us been positioned at the right angle there would have been no time to react and I have no doubt anyone in the direct path would have been killed/injured in a manner at least as seriously as if they'd taken a large caliber bullet. About the only solution I have heard that would make a difference is "more high schools with fewer students." The school I attended was designed with about a 750-total-student capacity in mind. My graduating class was 850. We were packed into hallways so tight that you basically squeezed your way to class with the running joke being that if you were too tired, just lift your feet off the ground and let everyone else take you there by force. Putting a high-trained police officer in that situation and asking them to "hit the shooter" would be practically impossible. Even assuming they hit the target, the bullet would travel through several other students before its settled into a wall/other sufficiently dense object capable of ending its journey. [0] Something we didn't drill for back then except for tornado drills. [1] Which, despite generally being a supporter of second amendment rights, I find myself supporting some of the more sensible approaches. Incidentally, I am not in support of "arming the teachers" -- the probability that adding another gun to the situation won't just result in more students being caught up in cross-fire isn't an adequate solution. [2] I live in a blue collar community that fits well into the category of "Reagan Democrats" -- so much so that until my late teens I had no idea Republicans were pro-gun and Democrats were anti-gun. Every Democrat I knew was a card carrying member of a union (usually one specific union) and every one of them had a firearm collection of a small militia. Nobody in my family/extended family -- all conservatives -- owned a firearm.

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Almost 30 years ago, I attended a college prep high school in Santa Clara County that allegedly removed all of the lockers because of pipe bomb explosions in the 1970's. The safety rationale was "lockers plus bombs equals shrapnel." The concrete footings for the lockers were still present throughout the school's outdoor halls. The campus was completely open and each classroom was a free-standing building.