Quote:
Originally Posted by donquixote99
I agree that one person with a pistol is going to be at a deadly disadvantage trying to close with and shoot a person with an assault rifle. He'll probably lose something like 9 out of 10 times, or worse. What you want is SWAT guys, with smoke/gas grenades, gas masks, and assault rifles of their own. And you want at least 3 or 4 of them. A team like that would have decent odds of getting the guy without one of them getting shot.
So, we don't want armed teachers. We want a SWAT team in every school. So let's say we do that. Surprise! Suddenly the trend is crazy killers shooting up churches.
If the solution is SWAT teams, we're going to need them in schools, in churches, at theaters, concert halls, stadiums, in all our workplaces, restaurants, nightclubs, malls, parks, and in the residential areas.
Doesn't sound workable. Trying sounds like a way to turn society into a prison, all gates and checkpoints and guards.
I favor
1) making it harder for crazy killers to get guns, and the more deadly the gun the harder.
2) working harder to find crazy killers before they go off, and intervene.
3) Working tremendously hard to build a decent society characterized first and foremost by loving kindness, where the situations that twist people into crazy killers are abated, not fueled, by the prevalent memes and norms.
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I don't want armed teachers either. I don't want anyone with any guns in any school. We don't live in a world where my wants make schools safer.
We don't need a SWAT team. Its not necessary. Right now, a school shooter has no fear. There's no deterrent there. We need to do what we've done at other public venues that have become targets: appropriately scale up security to counter and deter threats.
Detroit is a city that has lots of guns within the city limits - both legally owned and not legally owned. Detroit is a great example of why a discussion of ramping up gun control laws in the context of a school shooting discussion makes zero sense. You need a permit to purchase a handgun, a license to own one, and the owner is required to register the gun. Regardless, folks in Detroit who want to own guns are going to get them, legally or illegally.
In that environment, Detroit has done what needs to be done to make school campuses safer. More info here:
http://detroitk12.org/admin/dpspd/ Does this go far enough? Maybe, maybe not. But with all of the guns floating around the city, we've had (thank God) no mass shooting incidents here in Detroit or the surrounding communities.
Your 3 solutions above - if implemented - would take years to show any results, and there's no certainly that they would be successful at all. A program like the Detroit's could be implemented at the discretion of the community and its leaders, would likely require no changes in existing laws, and in the current atmosphere it seems likely that most folks would be firmly behind such an effort.