Can we please just admit that maybe gun control is a good idea finally?

I wasn't suggesting that the security measures replace gun control laws. I don't see why we can't have both, because if someone had actually followed the security policy at the school, the guy wouldn't have gotten in. The school locks its doors during classroom hours. Someone let him in. Even if he used some bogus excuse like "I'm dropping off lunch for my mom who is a teaching aide here," he shouldn't have been able to get to the classrooms; he has no business going there when the aide could easily pick it up herself from the main office during her lunch.

I'm operating on the assumption that once he's in the building, he can go wherever he pleases and nothing else is locked. I don't see why there can't be a reception area, like at a doctor's office, that's inside the exterior locked doors, and have another locked door that goes to the classrooms. The daycare I went to as a wee lass had a similar set-up; no one except staff and children were allowed past the sign-in room, period (though this was mostly to keep parents without custody from taking their kids from the custodial parent).

I realize that this is not flawless. He'd still be able to get in before/after classes, when the doors are unlocked. He'd be able to get in if there was an event like a school play or something that parents are invited to. It's not exhaustive. But why can't we have both sensible security measures (it doesn't even require a security guard or metal detectors!) in addition to better gun control?


(Also, where I grew up, all schools from 6th grade up had a deputy from the sheriff's dept. on site most of the time, and the high schools had a rent-a-cop at the parking lot gate, and we didn't even live in a particularly problematic area as far as crime rates go. I think their purposes were not to necessarily protect students from outsiders as much as keep the students in the school once they were there and to protect students from each other.)

OK but see. Say you have this security kiosk or whatever. This dude still has a fucking gun. And the people at security presumably do not. Dude is getting in.

Where I am objecting is the notion that security measures like you're suggesting be enforced (and sure, mild security like that is fine in general) would've saved anyone in this case. It would not have. The main difference would've been his shooting spree would've started at the security guards. So it's sort of an off-topic red herring, you see?

It doesn't even require someone at that first kiosk, that's the beauty of it.

I can understand why the first slip into the building happens. Someone is leaving, the guy is standing outside and it's cold/hot/raining/snowing/generally uncomfortable. Okay, you let him in so you don't feel shitty for leaving him in the elements. I've done it before myself at a pharma company.

Same pharma company has a reception area. There's two more doors past the first one that let you either into the manufacturing line or into the offices. The front desk isn't staffed at all. It just has a place to sit and a phone to call someone's extension; they have to come and get you in order to go further. It's a lot harder to sneak past that second set of doors when the person opening it doesn't recognize you, since that's where it's considered a serious breach of security.

Could he take a hostage (presumably the first person to leave the building) and get in anyway? Possibly. But again, why can't we have that AND sensible gun control? This isn't an either-or situation, and no single thing will prevent these kinds of incidents. We need comprehensive solutions, including the gun control and health care. All I'm asking for, essentially, is another set of doors, too.

He means separating the "school" area from the "administration" area with magnetic locks with remote switches that are activated from the inside. That certainly would have stopped him from entering the classrooms and shooting up the place.

However most schools are old and don't have that and retrofitting is expensive and JESUS FUCK GUNS ARE JUST FUCKING OBJECTS.

Sorry. Anyway: no one wants to spend money on education so the money for that will have to come out of the school budget so bye bye music and free lunches for poor kids and elective classes and after school activities and hello armed guards and locked gates so school shootings will have to take place AFTER the kids get out and are walking to their buses OR WE CAN JUST BE MORE RESPONSIBLE WITH OUR FUCKING KILLING TOOLS. FUCK.

Is it possible that he had it hidden until he got past the security point? After all, dude's mom worked there, it's entirely possible that it was all "Hey Bill" "Hey Frank" until he started opening fire on people.

In my experience, the security at our high school (for students) was completely incompetent. We had a metal detector that didn't work, and stood there unplugged in the corner. There was one police officer, who watched only the front entrance only during the hour or so between when the building opened and the first class started. He would "check your backpack", meaning he casually glanced in and then patted the front before letting you go. We had a trio of teachers who would do that at one of the side entrances. They didn't check purses, instrument cases, or any other bags. Meaning if you got there late, used any other door, put a gun in any bag other than your backpack, or even reasonably hid it in your backpack in one of the side pockets or under your books or whatever, you totally could have brought a gun to school.

For adults, it's non-existent. All they do is make you fill out a little visitor's pass sticker and send you on your way.

P.S. My brother seems to have deleted most of the argument, which means the "kill them with an axe" guy was only encouraged to write an entire essay on the topic.

I really want to respond with a big "[citation needed]".

Sir, have YOU read 1984? Please describe how your daily life resembles the book. Support your assertions with direct quotes. MLA format please.

Yeah, that's pretty basic.

And also completely false, since the moral spectrum of human is not a dichotomy.

There's some really stupid fucking shit going on between my favorite liberal troll and my most despised republican parrot. I'm debating whether to put it here or the stupid fucking shit thread.

Teaser: republican parrot used the stabbing in china to justify lax gun laws

It sounds like security theater to me. And I loathe security theater. Especially the kind of security theater that will make schools appear even more like they're just jails for children.

Apparently you never played Day-Z...

Gun nazi: It's "magazine" not "clip"!

I'm all for this for other reasons, but I don't see this as a realistic solution to gun violence. As I think was already mentioned before in this thread, college counseling is a waste of time. At my University, only the first session is free, and from what I hear they're more equipped to deal with schoolwork-related things.

Secondly, you're not allowed to commit a person inpatient unless they're an immediate threat to themselves or others AND they or someone else reports it. So that wouldn't have prevented the Aurora, CO shooting, for example, because all reports said that he was a pretty good kid, had everything in his life going for him and no criminal or mental health records. That wouldn't have prevented the Virginia Tech shooting, because, while all his friends and teachers said Cho had social difficulties, IIRC he had never expressed wanting to shoot up the school.

So in most cases, mental health professionals' hands are tied unless it's too late.

In just two short breaths, Fox News blames this tragedy on violent video games, reality TV, and Facebook.

I don't watch TV, that is clearly all that's standing between me and shooting up a school.

It's Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil. Please inform this person that only he is dumb enough that he could fuck up the easiest explosive known to man.

I watch reality TV online, am I a risk to the community? Or do I actually need TV service?

Here comes a fairly stupid point, but it's one that has me scratching my head nonetheless: over the summer, the US government banned the sale of Buckyballs. There was a small outcry (even a thread on this very forum), but after a few days the ban went into effect and that was that. Buckyballs were probably responsible for the deaths of a few dozen kids total, at the most. On the other hand, any discussion of even slightly restricting the availability of firearms is met with intense, often hyperbolic resistance. What's up with that?

Pretty much.

I mean seriously though. From a product-safety standpoint, is there anything manufactured in the United States today that's worse than a handgun?

AND WHAT IF HE HAD A BRACE OF PISTOLS AND A DASHING CHAPEAU, ALLIGATOR, WHAT THEN?

KINDER EGGS.

Oh wait those aren't actually manufactured in the U.S.

Nevermind.

ANOTHER MUSKET IN THE TEACHER'S TOP HAT

WATCH OUT, SHE'S DUAL-WIELDING!

The fact you watch it online means you are basically Hitler, I'm pretty sure.

Alcohol, tobacco products, it would be a long list.

Here in California, schools are mostly not single buildings, except in big cities. As in, you can walk onto campus from any direction, walk up to a classroom door, and go right in. There are no hallways, if you're lucky there's a chain link fence around the edge. I don't think we're going to rebuild billions of dollars of school buildings in order to control access in this way. I guess we could put up sniper towers and razor wire all around the outside.

My high school was the same way. It was at one point a military base, so the buildings have just been retro-fitted to be a school. The shitty gymnasium used to be a hangar! I think there were eight separate buildings, including a trailer. One building was even shared with another school (where the "problem students" attended). The main building entrance wasn't anywhere near the main administrative office even; it led to the auditorium and the not-shitty gym, you'd have to walk halfway around it to get to that office. The rest of the offices were hidden in another building entirely.

We didn't have a fence. And the doors didn't lock during school hours, either. We had cameras, though. Like I said, the security wasn't really to keep people out as much as it was to keep the kids from absconding once they showed up, or to deal with drugs that were confiscated.

Also:


I think maybe I need a real hobby sometimes. Hmm.

Never were we happier in high school than when we saw one of our teachers wheeling one of those suckers through the hallway. Minus the canon (sadly).

I can't believe the "arm the teachers" argument. Anybody who makes it is just dim. An armed teacher can't stop a psycho with his gun already out walking into a room. Four armed teachers can't. You'd have to have five, and hope the one who is the last target has solid nerve. Well, you could have them teach with gun in hand. Then you'd only need two per room. Three to be safe. Sorry, this isn't the movies. If someone walks into a small room with one entrance and has a gun drawn, a number of people are going to die, that number is probably going to be equal to or close to the number of people in the room, and that's that.

That is one of the worst, but just one of the many unavoidable consequences of the proliferation of high capacity, high caliber firearms, with runners up like increased chance of successful suicide and the lethality of domestic violence. There is no thought behind, to the point of it being just delusion, saying that there's even a partial solution to a Sandy Hook that doesn't involve prison-like architectural security or adding impediments to prospective mass murderers obtaining the firearms and/or stockpiling the quantities of ammunition that increase the lethality of a spree. And you can't secure everything like you could a school, so that kind of leaves one option, or zero.

Republican Parrot being trolled by Liberal Troll friend disagrees with you. Spoiler'd for length, and moronic drivel.

This goes on for quite a while.

I like how he appears to think that not only are we going to arm teachers, we're going to arm them in secret.

YOU DON'T STICK A CLIP IN THE GUN, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Ahem.

Guns nuts spewing second amendment horseshit have never read it, fancy that. Worth noting: militia used to be interchangeable with "locally raised auxiliary forces." Read: National Guard(s). Which, if it comes to that, is actually probably far better equipped to stage a coup against Washington than some inbred cocksniff out in the woods beating his meat to pictures of a pre-ban trigger group.

I shat a goddamn brick when a dude brought up body armour and rifles in the same train of thought. No, motherfucker, that's not how it works.

Ha. Those TV stands are familiar.

Another upside to a gun ban is that cops would never have to worry about getting shot in no-knock raids ever again.

Twinkies.

Ted Dziuba, who normally posts about computer programming, has a post about gun control. To summarize his point for him, the US should go ahead and restrict gun sales, so long as police forces are demilitarized somewhat as well. A comparison is made to the nuclear arms race during the Cold War. If the nominal purpose of the second amendment is to protect citizens from their government, then reduction in force should be met by both "sides."

I'm not sure to what extent I agree with him, but I am fairly certain that this (insofar as he is describing a course of action and not just a vague idea) will never actually happen.

How many times, especially in high schools, has a teacher had an unruly, offensive student? If all the teachers were armed, how many times a year would a teacher shoot a student? The answer to the first question is "a lot". The answer to the second question is "not zero".

Glad to see some reasonable people and opinions about this horrible event. Most of my day seemed dominated by either the 'gun control discussion is verboten' crowd or people quipping that if current gun control didn't prevent this, we shouldn't have any gun control at all. One, that's not how regulations work, and two, shut up you're dumb.

On Youtube I subscribe to progressive/liberal news media channels while also subscribed to conservative gun related channels (yes I'm a social progressive who likes and owns firearms). So after the news of the latest massacre it wasn't surprising the former had people demanding President Obama push for more gun control, if not outright banning guns, while the latter had suggested that the teachers should have been armed.

Apparently there is no middle ground on this matter, at least not in the US.

I know it's pointless to even devote brain cycles to this sort of nonsense, but seriously: W. T. F. The shooter wasn't a student, or a faculty member. How is the presence or absence of god in schools supposed to have any effect on him, one way or the other? What a fucking ass.

Not only that, how often would a student end up shooting a teacher with the teachers' own gun? Or shooting another student? Or shooting themselves? Happens with guns in the home all the time, even when the gun is theoretically under lock and key at all times.

Duh, if children could pray in schools then God would put a big soft bubble of love and protection around them and the bullets would fail to harm them, much like Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction. Because nothing bad ever happened to children in schools when prayer was allowed. You could probably look it up.

I mean, there's all those wars and inquisitions and bombings and things in the name of God, but totally not the same thing.

Also he thought the shooter was not going to keep fighting if he was shot at, despite the fact that he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.