<p>Is it me or does it seem like a rash of school shootings? What could be the reason? How is school security handled in other parts of the country? Is it possible to just walk right in?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html[/url]”>http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=244666[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=244666</a></p>
<p>I have yet to see a school anywhere that is impossible to enter. When people with guns are intent on doing harm to innocents, how can they be stopped?</p>
<p>30,000 gun deaths a year in this country, whaddya expect? Then again, I want most gun control abolished anyway.</p>
<p>It’s pretty tough to get into a school in NYC. Most entrances (high schools) have uniformed police. I guess it wouldn’t be impossible, but I wonder if it’s easier in other parts of the country.</p>
<p>Here in Wisconsin, scene of one of the school shootings, only the urban schools have personnel assigned to the door. Most schools leave only the front doors unlocked, with a polite note posted on the door, requesting that all visitors register at the office. Works great for those not seeking to create mayhem.</p>
<p>Thank God a boy in northern WI reported classmates who were accumulating an arsenal. At least one disaster averted.</p>
<p>“…a rash of school shootings?”</p>
<p>I think that is similar to “a rash of shark attacks.” The media has caught on to this. I tried to do an internet search on the history of school shootings, and every site thinks that these began in the 1990’s.</p>
<p>However, as a teacher who experienced a school shooting (two kids shot - neither fatally - in an adjoining classroom separated from mine by a curtain) in 1970, which was not reported, even locally in the newspaper, I can assure you that this is not a recent phenomenon.</p>
<p>Recent or not, dig, there certainly has been what could reasonably called “a rash” in the past three weeks. First Montreal, then Colorado, Wisconsin, and now Pennsylvania. It matters not when they began, they are just as horrific.</p>
<p>As someone who once had no difficulty removing my child from school for an orthodontist appointment during a supposed total lockdown (prompted by a sniper incident in the community, of which I was unaware), I can testify that school security leaves much to be desired.</p>
<p>3 in one week is a rash for sure. I thought the headline I saw was “old news” and then learned it was a new one. </p>
<p>At our hs new security was implemented this year. You have to ring a doorbell and be buzzed in if you don’t have a card. Some of us (including me) were wondering, why now? why here? But now it seems like maybe not such a bad idea.</p>
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<p>I agree that with someone intent on doing harm, all attacks cannot be averted. </p>
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<p>This made me laugh (though this topic is very serious) because it is so true. It is the case here in my school district, anyway. </p>
<p>I do not have the answers. I’m wondering, however, if at least a metal detector at the one unlocked entrance would help with guns and knives. It is an expensive solution, I imagine. A security guard checkpoint at the one open entrance would be a possibility but also expensive and time consuming each day for all to pass through. But no community is immune. </p>
<p>I live in an area with VERY VERY little crime. But as you saw a month ago, in my state (not my town), an estranged boyfriend killed his girlfriend’s mother in her house (she actually was an elem teacher), then went looking for her D (his ex who just broke up with him) who was also an elem teacher at the local school and he entered the school, which FORTUNATELY was an inservice day for teachers before the first day of school this year. He didn’t find her right away and shot and killed another teacher, and wounded a second teacher. He left the building and shot a guy he knew at a condo complex nearby. Thankfully no kids were at school. But this guy wasn’t even targeting a school or children per se. It so happened that his ex was a teacher and she worked at the school. So, even someone who is not seeking school violence still can enter such a building and cause horrific tragedy. The incidents lately in Montreal, Colorado and Wisconsin are unimaginable tragedies. Schools need to be safe havens. </p>
<p>We can’t stop all violence. Some creative strategies to make it harder to enter a school with weopens and have access to those who work there are needed. I know it is easy to complain without solutions. And I know that simply removing weopens from a school doesn’t solve the deeper problems of some in society. But in the meantime, since we do have adults and children in our society who are sick and who would do such acts, we do need to step up whatever we can to reduce the number, though as AlwaysAMom says, we can’t stop every attempt. Just like terrorism.</p>
<p>PS, I just read AlwaysAmom’s other thread about an additional shooting in PA…I just cry when I hear these incidents and I agree with her about gun control! My concern even with gun control, which is imperative, is that there are already so many guns out there in the wrong hands and I know it won’t solve everything but it is a start.</p>
<p>Now they are attacking the Amish schools. A 32 year old milk man went into a one room Amish school house and shot and killed 3 girls and then turned the gun on himself. What in the world is wrong with men??? Women don’t do this. If one is going to commit suicide, why take children with you? This man had 3 kids and a wife. I am fed up with people attacking kids.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15105305/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15105305/</a></p>
<p>Attacks by people who are willing to die will not be stopped by banning guns, knives, automobiles or Coca-Cola machines. That’s nonsense and a diversion from the real issues at hand.</p>
<p>Ever wonder why many (most?) of these attacks occur in areas where gun control is strongly supported?</p>
<p>I would/will never give up my right to possess and use firearms. Even if I choose not to exercise it.</p>
<p>Not that we have a right to own and drive a car (we don’t - driving is a privilege, remember?), but when we have a terrible accident or even a vehicular homicide, where are the calls to ban cars and trucks? More people die in cars than by guns…every day.</p>
<p>parent2noles, I’m sorry but your analogy about car accidents is totally different. How many people get in their cars and intentionally look to cause harm to others? Cars are a necessity in society, and a harmless one, if utilized for their intended purpose. Guns have one purpose and one purpose only, to cause bodily harm! So forgive me if I do not think that it’s “nonsense” to hate guns. Gun control, in my opinion, is not enough. It doesn’t work. As I said earlier, I long for the day when no one but the police and the army are armed. I’m well aware that this is a pipedream that is unlikely to occur in my lifetime but I can still hope. The right to possess and use firearms may have been a necessity in colonial times but it certainly isn’t today. I don’t understand why anyone would even want a gun in their home. I don’t know a single person who owns a gun, even for hunting, let alone a handgun, either here in Toronto, or any of our family or friends in the U.S.</p>
<p>My high school was very open. As it wasn’t an indoor school, there were quite a few ways to enter and exit. Some were monitored some of the time, but it was still quite easy to go off campus when you weren’t supposed to. I assume it would be just as easy to get in…</p>
<p>My senior year, there was a week in which we had a big fight every day, caused by people who didn’t even go to school there. They tightened the security for a bit, and talked about maybe fencing the school in, but nothing really significant was done.</p>
<p>parent2noles
“Ever wonder why many (most?) of these attacks occur in areas where gun control is strongly supported?”</p>
<p>Two of these attacks happened in Colorado where gun control is NOT strongly supported. Quite the contrary. (Alas.)</p>
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<p>Is this true? Colorado, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania strong for gun control? Isn’t that the state that closes all the public schools to celebrate the first day of deer season?</p>
<p>My classroom and four others at our school open directly to the main parking lot/drop-off lot. It would be easier than anything to walk right in, and in fact, parents do, even though they are supposed to check in with the office and have their child called up by a student runner. I would feel safer, I guess if I was in a classroom inside the perimeter, but really nothing is going to stop someone who is armed and determined. We do not have armed guards, and even then, it would be pretty easy to take one by surprise and get past.</p>
<p>It’s ok to hate guns and never have one. That’s your right, as it is mine to have one or not. This is a basic right, enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and should not be taken lightly nor trivialized because of modern conveniences or attitudes.</p>
<p>Further, this is a specific, articulated right; it is neither implied nor extracted from the ‘penumbra’ of judicial discussion surrounding the right to freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government. (Abortion rights came from the ‘penumbra’, for example)</p>
<p>The basic issue at hand is not sensational, dramatic and horrific murders. We are all repelled and shocked at the brutality of the senseless murder of innocents. As a father, I am deeply grieved at the loss and the crime.</p>
<p>Be that as it may be, it’s not about guns, today. It’s about murder. Were guns not available, the next instrument of aggression would be. It’s silly to blame guns. That’s the easy way out; and it does not work. The Democrats discovered this is a dead issue for them in 2000, when Al Gore proposed general gun registration as a plank in the Dem’s platform. They are silent today on the issue for good reason - they lose with it.</p>
<p>Our neighbors and friends from Canada may not see the significance here, because their forefathers did not rebel against English tyranny for many years for rights such as these. Did you ever wonder why this particular right was regarded so highly by the American Founders to rate Amendment slot #2? It’s not about hunting deer, or shooting targets on the weekend. The right to possess and use firearms refers directly to the right of the people to resist tyrannical government - when only the Police and the Army have weapons, like in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. Both societies banned guns - reducing the common people to mere sheep; to be led if the state wanted, to the slaughter. Never in America.</p>
<p>I am not going to do the research today, due to passions being high at the crimes at hand, but I would offer most such mass crimes have occurred in states with tighter gun control laws. I can name more than a few from memory; but will not under the circumstances.</p>
<p>Pray for the victims and their families.</p>
<p>Oops.</p>
<p>This should read:</p>
<p>The basic issue at hand is sensational, dramatic and horrific murders. We are all repelled and shocked at the brutality of the senseless murder of innocents. As a father, I am deeply grieved at the loss and the crime.</p>