Posted on 01/21/2014 5:04:39 AM PST by rellimpank
We all must thank the nation's media outlets that honored the wishes of the community of Newtown, Conn., and stayed away on the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December. The compassion and restraint during the town's time of remembrance was commendable. I hope this can be a starting point for addressing the overwhelming issue of school shootings, which have persisted in this country for far too long.
As a school superintendent, there is nothing more frightening to me than the thought of another senseless school shooting. Yet, within the current psychology of our nation, it is all but inevitable.
Being from a rural and small school district provides no comfort. If another school shooting is to occur, we are as likely as any other school in the nation to be blindsided by it. School shootings have become a cancer on the soul of education in our country. Our efforts to thwart their recurrence have been all but futile.
Yet we do our best to react and prepare. We lock our doors. We install and use electronic buzz-in systems. We practice emergency procedures. We watch and wait with a sinking feeling in our stomachs that we might not be able to prevent a strong-willed shooter from getting into a school nor be able to deal with such a person if he shows up. We wait, hope, pray and continue to do our best to prepare.
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
--We must encourage the media to stop giving unnecessary coverage to these incidents. If not, we are inadvertently providing a platform for dark fame and despicable notoriety for the next person who contemplates his or her own desperate and evil plot. As Schulman wrote, "If we are going to stop the spectacle of mass killings, we need to keep them from being spectacles."
Arm the teachers. Allow licensed gun owners to board planes with their weapons. Give us all a fighting chance to fight back.
—ping——
“Let’s help prevent school shootings.”
Why just school shootings? How about mall shootings? Workplace shootings? Street shootings?
As long as there are millions of individuals whose ‘value system’ allows them to murder other people, this will continue.
When the only ‘value system’ is selfish, materialistic opportunism, you will have more and more shootings.
—if somebody out there has full access to Chicago Trib, their lead editorial this am suggests “importing” California gun control to Chicago-I’ll try and find a way to post it but if someone else can , would appreciate it—( I will not pay for a full subscription)
If the powers that be REALLY cared for kids, they would put a metal detector in all schools...you know like the courthouse and federal blds. The NEA had rather spend the money on their pensions than protect the children.
With all the pervert training, the lack of real education, and the religion of Secular Humanism being unConstitutionally forced down our throats...it sounds like a perfect reason to scrap, or at least boycott, the public school system.
If you want your kids to have a chance, home school them. Or send them to a “bitter-clinger” school of heavily armed, Christian teachers.
—thanks—surprised I missed that one as I usually check Clayton Cramer’s blog daily-—
Really?
How many children die each year in this country from school shootings - versus say, auto accidents, cancer, fires, child-abuse, food allergies, drowning, bicycle accidents, etc. etc. etc. ?
That is a big part of the problem right there. Many (most?) schools rely on passive security measures. These are the Maginot line of the modern age. They are easily bypassed. In Newtown, the shooter spent just several seconds and several rounds shooting out the large glass window next to the "secured" door and walked right in. So yeah, all those open, glassed-in "we can see everyone coming in" entry ways? Not secure at all. Might as well not even bother with the expense of an electronic lock, intercom, camera, etc. "buzz" system. A shooter can be inside faster than you can buzz in a late student.
Unless your emergency procedures involve armed personnel on-site reacting you are not doing your duty to protect the students and staff. At Arapahoe they have an armed "resource officer" there who reacted and confronted the shooter in 80 seconds. (compared to nearly 20 min in Newtown before the confrontation)
I'm not saying passive defenses are bad, just that they should not be the only tool in your kit. Passive defenses raise the bar for anyone considering doing something insane. They will deter most people until they've cooled off or found an easier outlet for whatever is bugging them. But when a truly disturbed individual comes along (and we seem to be generating them more frequently) passive defenses will not stop him/her. That is why if you are truly serious about safety and security you put armed personnel on-site where they can react quickly to a bad situation before it becomes worse. The anti-gun libs hate that, even though they know it is true. They also hate the fact that all but a couple of mass shootings have been perpetrated by people on the left and that many of the kids who have perpetrated them have been on some kind of behavioral treatment. (drugs)
That article is from 2012.
Another biggie is there needs to be a better and more frank way of dealing with mental illness. I’m still not too old to remember what it was like to be at that age, and how toxic an environment that many public schools can be for kids, who have mental issues and/or are emotionally fragile. The right intervention at the right time could ALSO go a long way to preventing further tragedies.
And I’m not talking about mollycoddling. I think that the social-engineering ‘feel-good’ experiments that have been done to kids since the late sixties have done more long-term damage to them than anything else.
Sometimes all that’s REALLY needed is something as simple as finding a way to help a kid build their confidence and strength of character, so they don’t snap under the strain; not some ‘swath the kid in bubble-wrap/you are always special and always a winner’ production number.
all that is needed is god security. Rather than taking the dregs of the police forces and sending them to schools, there should be a real effort to provide good security.
“..at Arapahoe they have an armed ‘resource officer’...”
My daughter’s high school (she is a sophomore) has an armed SRO - Student Resource Officer stationed at the school full time. The Officer is a woman, and she is an armed police officer. I am extremely thankful that the school has done this, and pleasantly surprised as we live in New York State. The Officer parks her police car prominently in full view under the flag in front of the school to alert everyone that there is an armed presence in the high school. They have the buzzer and all that; however knowing that there is armed presence has to be a deterrent vs. the current “gun free” mentality that creates sitting ducks.
Another way to handle it would be to have certain designated trained armed teachers who would be anonymous - similar to the sky marshall idea.
As you say - relying only on passive security measures is a mistake.
It seems to me that all schools should have an SRO.
On the “mental health” angle, there needs to be a new paradigm to provide reasonable institutionalization for those with mental health issues.
The states used to provide mental health institutionalization (MHI), but were never particularly good at it, both allowing the seriously mentally ill to roam free, and confining those who did not need confinement.
Likewise, there is a tangible fear of federal MHI, because of the fact that it would invariably lead to political persecution, as it has in so many nations.
So the best solution might be to meet halfway. For small groups of states to set up a regional mental health care facilities, with state contributions funding it based on the number of mentally ill each state institutionalizes there.
Each state would also provide mental health professionals to the facility, who would sit on an admissions board, with any two of the board able to veto a patient’s admission or continued presence there.
The facility would be subdivided into sections based on the potential of recovery of patients. One section would be for those medically determined to be beyond recovery to functionality. Another would be to those who could benefit from therapy, possibly enough to be returned to their state in a group home. A third section would be for those who are “guilty but insane”, and represent a potential for harm to themselves or others. A fourth section would be for administration and research.
Being placed there would not be easy, nor would it be easy to leave. Local authorities, likely at county level would have to make a referral to the state, and independent state evaluation for a recommendation to the regional facility, with final evaluation before admission.
To leave, a reverse order would be taken. First the regional facility would determine, likely with a two state veto, that the patient did not need to be there. Then the state mental health authorities would determine if they should get further care at the state level. If not, they would be evaluated a last time at the county level.
But where can we find a better value system? A good new system of values has not been presented in nearly 2,000 years.
School shootings are the new shark attack stories.
How many schools in the US? (don’t forget to include Amish and other religious schools)
How many schools have had school shootings?
Divide.
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