brassplyer said:
Put armed faculty in place.
Armed cops at schools, who are full time and trained to stop bad guys, have failed to stop shooters. Even when things go perfectly, the shooter may still make several casualties before the cop gets him. A teacher already has a full time job. You can arm them if they accept that responsibility, but there’s no reason to think it will solve the issue, plus you then need to consider the potential amount of accidental discharges, students stealing weapons off teachers, or students overpowering teachers. It also does nothing to stop all the other shootings at malls, nightclubs, places of employment, or just in the street.
As tragic as they are, the starting point is that statistically school shootings remain extremely rare events. Yes, at this very moment you're winding up with a big breath to make a wild-eyed contradiction to this because you buy into the amount of publicity they get in comparison to their actual (tiny) prominence in the world of crime and way kids die but in the overall scheme of things they're extremely rare. There's a very long list of ways a kid is far more likely to be hurt or killed than due to a school shooting.
Some of what I mentioned previously would help mitigate the number of such incidents - don't adopt stupid politically correct policies, people around the shooter not being unaware idiots. The Columbine shooters stored weapons in their room, their parents had no idea.
On the rare occasions when they do occur you may not reduce the death or injury toll to -0- but prominent among the various reasons police are rarely much of a factor in school shootings is the amount of time it takes them to respond when a fast response is the most crucial factor, proximity to and awareness of the shooter. Once police arrive on a campus they're not familiar with they still have to figure out where the shooter is and get in proximity to them, that's if the shooter is still even active. No one is closer to the shooter and has more immediate awareness of the situation than faculty who are on location. It's entirely possible those on scene could neutralize or contain the shooter before police are even made aware of it.
Columbine was supposedly the event that changed how police would respond to school shooting incidents which proved to be a load of crap. A large force of police arrived, stood around in the parking lot and refused to go into the building where the shooters were, instead waiting for a SWAT team to arrive, or at least that's what they claimed - IMO they waited for the shooters to run out of steam and eventually kill themselves which they did. The SWAT team did eventually arrive, yet never went into the building until long after the shooting had stopped. The only cop who saw the shooters alive was a campus cop who had a brief exchange of gunfire from a long distance, didn't hit either gunman. They retreated into the building to continue their rampage, police never entered the building until long after they and a number of students and faculty were dead.
At Parkland the SRO Deputy that was there refused to go into the building where the shooting was taking place and gave radio instructions that only hindered police who arrived. The shooter escaped undetected with police on location, was only captured later when spotted by luck walking down the street.
Obviously no one would be compelled to carry and there should be psych evals and training and there are no guarantees as to how things would go down but to date the only legal option teachers and faculty have had has been to be sitting ducks which is really stupid. To date 100% of all school shootings have been on so-called "Gun Free Zone" campuses.
It has nothing to do with making teachers into cops - just from a standpoint of self-preservation it's rational that one would want the option of being able to defend themselves and shoot back rather than be a sitting duck and watch as students are shot and the shooter brings their attention to you. I would want to be armed in a school setting for the same reason I currently carry anywhere I'm legally allowed to. If someone doesn't think they have it in them to step up if it were ever necessary they shouldn't be carrying anywhere.
I guarantee a better news story than:
"Slain teacher who shielded students from gunman is remembered as a hero"
Would be:
"See our exclusive interview with the hero teacher who stopped school shooter".
Your notion of things has a 100% failure rate. 100%.
To date the number of shootings, injuries or fatalities on campuses with armed faculty is -0-. Zero. I realize until this moment you had no awareness that there *are* such campuses. To date there have been -0- incidents of students stealing firearms or accidental discharges.
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