Wait, wait, wait, wait wait just a minute. So security check points are good enough for international airports, government buildings and installations, but not good enough for a grade school? That's laughable.
When thousands of kids are paying hundreds of dollars every time they walk into the school, then we can talk about the practicality of having that level of security in our public schools. Forgive me for restricting my assumptions to the reasonable ones. We can't provide that level of security at schools. It would cost too much. We can, however, just by removing the existing gun-free zone restrictions in schools, essentially get some level of security "free".
The quickest way to stop a shooter is at the door when the alarm goes off. If you want to prevent him with the ability to shoot, then you need to side with the weapon law enforcements. As long as the weapons exists, you can't do anything to prevent a person from shooting, only put out measures to hinder or deter them from doing it.
Sure. But you seem to be under the impression that we either stop the shooter cold right at the door before he fires a shot, or we can't stop him at all until the police arrive. The reality is that stopping every shooter at the door is a near impossibility, if for no other reason than most (all?) schools have multiple points of entry, and in order to ensure we could stop said shooter right there would require multiple guards at each of them. It's simply not practical.
Let's restrict our options to ones that we can actually do, ok?
Read above. You're missing the point, which is that armed or not, that isn't a deterrent for a mass shooting. So, while the shooter is stopped sooner, people are still being killed.
If he's stopped sooner, then fewer people are killed. Which is the whole point of this. I'm not precluding other means to attempt to deter or prevent folks from attempting school shootings in the first place. I'm simply suggesting an incredibly simple and cheap solution which would mitigate the harm done during such shootings in the future when/if they occur. Your argument is like insisting there's no reason for seat belts or airbags in cars because the best way to prevent accident fatalities is to avoid ever getting into an accident. Well, in the real world, accidents will happen no matter how much we try to prevent them. Similarly, shootings will happen despite our best efforts. So let's have an extra line of defense aside from just hoping that our background checks, and gun restrictions all work.
Once you realize that we don't live in Hollywood, you'll see that your 50 year old English teacher wont John Wayne him or herself into a better performance than a trained professional.
Sure. But the 30 something
Marine now teaching math at the local middle school, who is an avid target shooter and has a concealed license *will* be able to do quite a bit. Let's not pretend that all teachers must be elderly and helpless.
That's why I said if a person were serious about it. If the goal was to kill a specific person or a mass crowd, then s/he wouldn't be just running down the halls, but going into a specific spot. At that specific spot, any opposition will more than likely be dealt with armed or not. Having a gun doesn't prevent you from being shot and killed.
Which goes for the shooter as well, right? Can you at least acknowledge that anyone in the area who attempts to stop the shooter will have a better chance if they are armed than if they aren't? So what's the problem?
Except I said that the goal of the shooter isn't to avoid death, but to cause the most damage before being killed. The counter is trying to PREVENT the shootings from happening in the first place. While your solution helps to end a shooter on a rampage, it doesn't prevent the rampage. Since the proposed counter is to prevent the rampage, your solution is irrelevant.
Given that we don't currently have any effective means of ensuring we can prevent shootings from occurring, I think my solution is incredibly relevant. Certainly, there's no reason not to pursue it while we work on that magical means of prevention you want to have.
Read above. So, you believe that a teacher too terrified to physically attack a shooter when attack will gain the courage and skills to take out a shooter while possessing a weapon.
No. I'm saying that everything else staying the same, any attempt by someone to attack the shooter will have a higher chance of success if the person attempting it is armed compared to if they are not. So if we assume that the ratio of people in the area who will try to stop the shooter remains constant, then the rate of success increases with the rate at which those people are armed. Again, this is not rocket science here.
Once again, unless you're giving children guns, adults will always be the target as they will be the ones to stop the shooting armed or not. Your solution is nice, but it doesn't prevent the mass shooting.
I'm not arguing that this will prevent the shooting. I'm arguing that it will decrease the average number of fatalities that result from shootings. And that's better than *not* reducing that number. Again, I'm not precluding some other plans to prevent shootings. I just don't see any reason why we can't take steps to reduce the number of fatalities from such shootings while we wait for that perfect solution to arrive. Edited, Jan 17th 2013 4:50pm by gbaji