Since the U.S. Senate refuses to consider any regulation of guns, some schools are preparing for the next shooter.
In Colorado, students are receiving training in how to respond if they are confronted by an active shooter.
Colorado was the site of the Columbine massacre in a high school and the Aurora massacre in a movie theater. Last May, a student was killed in a charter school in Douglas County.
The gym at Pinnacle High School echoed with laughter and a few cheers Wednesday morning as students took turns tackling a heavily padded man.
While it might have sounded like a game, the orange water pistol in the demonstrator’s hand served as a reminder of what would be at stake if they ever had to use the tactics they were learning on a real assailant.
The Adams County K-12 charter school spent most of the school day having students practice skills such as barricading their classrooms, evacuating the building — and, if necessary, defending themselves. Many schools near Denver and across the country teach the idea of fighting back as one possible option during an attack, but relatively few have students actually practice what they might do if a gunman entered their classrooms.
Clarissa Burklund, president of Pinnacle’s school board, said officials hadn’t discussed having students do more than traditional lockdown drills until this summer. The May 7 shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch, where three students rushed one of two attackers, showed that teenagers could defend themselves and need to prepare for that possibility, she said.
“I hate that they have to talk about this,” she said with a catch in her voice. “I hate that they live in this society. But they do, and there’s no point in denying it….”
There’s no nationwide tracking of how schools prepare their students for active shooters, but emphasis appears to have gradually shifted from “locks, lights, out of sight,” where students are told to take shelter in their classrooms, to “run, hide, fight,” where they are expected to choose their best option for the situation. Some schools also have started conducting more realistic drills, including the sounds of simulated gunfire, but that practice has spurred controversy, especially when students weren’t aware they were only dealing with a drill.
Little evidence exists to show if one type of active shooter training is more effective than another, and some experts have concerns about emphasizing cases in which students have fought back. The fear is that could encourage students to overlook safer options such as evacuating.
Cowardly lawmakers dumped the problem on public schools to solve, like they do with literally every problem they encounter.
And after the next shooting they’ll be pushing one another out of the way to get to a microphone to blame their favorite punching bag, public schools.
Schools are magical, Diane. Lawmakers and elites can literally drop every national problem on their doorstep and then blame them when they don’t solve it.
Instead of the abject cowardice this approach actually represents, they’re lauded as “truth tellers”. Not a one of them has a kid or grandkid IN a public school, which certainly helps when dumping this garbage ON public schools.
It’s a giant payday for “security experts” though. We now have a brand new bunch of government contractors we’ll be funneling public school funding to. They joyfully cut music and art and recess but they award millions to avoid the gun problem.
I would say public schools should decline, but they’re in a real bind. They know they’ll be blamed if they don’t engage in this security playacting.
OMG … crazy.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump just tweeted out the new logo for his presidential campaign–a red, white, and blue lion. It is almost identical to a logo used by VDARE, a white supremacist, neo-Nazi group. The logo is based on a saying from Benito Mussolini: “Better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”
Looks like Dog-Whistle Don is just going to come right out as a fascist.
These neo-Nazi and neo-fascist knuckle heads would do well to look at the photographs of the corpses of Hitler and Mussolini in the closing days of WWII. Hitler had to commit suicide and then his body was drenched in gasoline and set afire. Mussolini was caught by the partisans, executed, his body was subsequently mutilated beyond recognition by the enraged mobs who suffered years of despotism, slaughters and war. The Axis powers lost, decisively, “funny” how these Nazi/fascist lovers miss that glaringly obvious point.
I’m no expert and I haven’t reviewed any literature, but my gut level instinct tells me that training students to rush an shooter is the worst possible way to go. Someone’s going to get it into his head (and it will be a he) to be a hero and end up making a bad situation (or even a not bad but misunderstood situation) worse. Someone’s going to get hurt who wouldn’t have otherwise.
If a shooter enters a classroom full of kids, this is their only chance.
In some rare cases, yes, but I think in those cases, survival instincts (or maybe altruistic instincts) alone will kick in. I think training kids (or anyone for that matter) to rush a shooter leads to situations in which ego overrides instinct. We are, after all, animals, with finely honed survival instincts.
A few years ago a school secretary talked down an armed man who intended to commit a school shooting. If she had been trained to rush a shooter, might she have done that instead, thereby getting herself killed without saving any students?
Yes, rushing an armed shooter in a hallway is a crazy idea. But it’s my understanding that students are being advised about what to do if the shooter gets into a classroom.
I’m with you on this one, Dienne.
It is highly unlikely that any additional firearms regulations will have any appreciable impact on mass shootings or school shootings. Any hope of the current congress passing any additional firearms legislation is about zero anyway.
It seems to me, that having drills to keep students/staff aware of procedures in case of a shooting incident, is more than appropriate. Having evacuation routes clearly marked, and other information made available, are good steps to take.
Teaching unarmed students/staff to charge at a shooter is absurd. That will get you into a body bag, right quickly.
“It is highly unlikely that any additional firearms regulations will have any appreciable impact on mass shootings or school shootings.”
Citation needed.
see this :
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/mass-shootings.html
The Rand corporation is a conservative think tank, but I find their conclusions plausible.
It is a virtual certainty that mass shootings will have little impact on firearms legislation. See this study from Harvard:
Click to access 16-126_ce055015-fc1c-4a8c-9a8a-8a9361d808bb.pdf
(Harvard is NOT a conservative institution!)
“(Harvard is NOT a conservative institution!”
Uh, well…..
It depends on how you define conservative. Harvard is neoliberal in the extreme – they are True Believers in “Free Market” [sic} capitalism. That used to be a very conservative position, but somehow it has been sold to “liberals” too.
As of 2017, the US had more firearms (393,347,000) than people (326,474,000).
Best training: 30 days to hand in all semi automatic weapons in exchange for a buy back; or life in prison with out parole if caught with one in your possession. Try that for starters. Till then thoughts and prayers.
Joel,
I endorse that.
dienne77
Define liberal! The target of neo liberalism is crushing organized labor and labor in general. . It is that simple, there are no free markets, never have been never will be. Someone is always picking winners and losers. And that someone is government. Whether you are talking a hunter gather society or a post industrial society.
Perhaps you can explain the inconsistencies . For instance are neo liberals at all concerned about Government granted monopolies in the form of patent protections no matter how long they are granted for. In fact they design trade agreements to put blue collar workers in competition with the lowest wage workers in the world. While they scream about protecting “Intellectual Property rights”. And seriously was there really an outcry about the Fed quantitative easing and bailing out the free market bankers. Not until the 23 trillion in revolving loans made them whole.
It was never about God, Gays and Guns. those were distractions to divert the working class while they were being looted. Things that the oligarchy/ plutocracy had no concerns about as they did not affect the bottom line. So again define liberal. Tell me how someone can call themselves Liberal pursuing the policy of Milton Friedman , Ronald Reagan, Margret Thatcher and Pinochet.
The firearms regulations regarding machine guns appeared to have worked. How many mass shootings by machine guns have there been in the past few years? I’ll hazard a guess and say that most Americans, including gun owners, want stronger gun laws, they’ve had enough. We should at least ban semi-automatic assault rifles and those large super-sized ammunition magazines.
This is the least we can do. We also have to do something about the semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines already in private hands. A mandatory buy-back program is called for.
“Teaching unarmed students/staff to charge at a shooter is absurd. That will get you into a body bag, right quickly.” I agree. Can’t help thinking of the trained cop who sat out Parkland shooting from a remote/ safe position. The instruction actually reqd to make this work would probably involve weeks of something akin to combat training. The odds would be better hiding behind an overturned desk, I should think.
Reminds me of the air-raid drills we used to have in the 60s — as if crouching under a desk would keep us safe in a nuclear attack. Misguided as it was, at least it was focused on a potential threat from outside the country, rather than attack from another American in our own community.
This whole thing is SO sick. Children are learning to fear and it will affect their lives. Who wants to go to school with the thought that some killer with a gun might come at any time? Children are being prepared for this so of course they will believe it will happen. Teachers and the school don’t lie.
The insanity of ‘love of guns’ is just plain crazy. One can legally purchase an assault rifle at the age of 18 in Indiana. Why does any kid need that? Stupidity reigns in this country.
STATE CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION – Article 1 Section 32.
“The people shall have a right to bear arms, for the defense of themselves and the State.”
“Children are being prepared for this…” VERY astute: kids are being socially taught that there will be no legislation on guns, only shooter-reactive trainings and then a few weeks of “sucking up” the casualties.
Teaching students that crap is literally going to get kids killed.
I’m appalled that they used the example of two kids rushing the gunman in last spring’s Colorado shooting. One of those students was killed doing it.
We had a school shooter several years ago in my district. The kid shot into a crowded lunchroom. No one was hurt, including the shooter, though, because an assistant principal rushed in and quietly and carefully talked the shooter down.
I know that’s not going to work in all cases, but in a situation with a freaked-out kid coming to school with a gun and shooting that way, talking them down might save lives.
But forcing students into going after a gunman is reckless and I’m disgusted that they are being taught that.
Couldn’t agree w/you more, TOW. One student, one teacher, one human being killed in rushing a gunman is one student too many. That is what officers of the law are for. Touting the “fact” (questionable) that he (the dead student who rushed) saved so many lives is, IMO, no different than the worn out, meaning nothing “thoughts & prayers” (which were, once again, today, offered up by Cruz & wife, Pence (worded a bit differently, but the same), &, also, by Biden. O’Rourke used stronger (!) language, “This is f#@&%d!,” but, still…meaningless. As Mom (o.b.m.) always used to say, “Actions speak louder than words.”
Also, Joel Herman, best idea yet–your 8/30 @ 8:45 PM above.
And…STOP NAMING THE SHOOTER–you can look up “Don’t Say His Name,” w/all the good reasons, esp. now, with all the white supremacy & other hate groups–American terrorists, & it’s martyrdom to them. (Anderson Cooper had pledged that he {&, perhaps, also speaking on behalf of CNN} would not name shooters after one such incident &, yet, he–& CNN–continue to do so, as does all of msm.)
& they, the msm, is a huge part of the problem, as well. (Since I am typing, I happen to have CNN on {my bad}, & they have been showing video of the shootings over & over & over again.) Now that I’m done, I’ll turn it off.
It never ends. Hobart is in NW Indiana. People have to have their guns and politicians have no common sense.
………………………………………….
[NWI Times] UPDATE: Man shot at Hobart Walmart; 2 people taken into custody
HOBART — Police took two people into custody and recovered weapons Sunday afternoon after a man was shot inside the Walmart off U.S. 30, an official said.
An off-duty East Chicago police officer took a man into custody after the shooting about 3:50 p.m. in the store in the 2900 block of East 79th Avenue, Hobart police said. A woman who had accompanied the man into the store also was arrested.
The wounded man was taken to a local hospital and tentatively listed in stable condition, police said. He was undergoing surgery Sunday night…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/update-man-shot-at-hobart-walmart-people-taken-into-custody/article_21fa2deb-7efb-5ac9-bcac-bc08765d6cef.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share