Mass Shooting in Connecticut-THREAD NAME CHANGE

[stroo]

Gun control is the feel good solution. But like almost every feel good solution that the politicians come up with, it doesn't work. Ayoob is right on.

The solution is to train teachers and other to personnel in school to defend themselves and their students.

We need to have policies in place in each school that limits access during school hours to one point. But that doesn't do any good if the people at that point or immediately beyond it, as in this case, don't have any real means of stopping someone.

Lockdowns can work in the right situations although in this case it probably would have made it easier for the BG to kill more kids if he had not killed himself when he did.

Escape through windows could also work although in this case it appears most of the kids were killed in one classroom. Probably no time for escape there.

It appears to me that the only thing that really could have stopped this one is a couple people armed at the entrance.

I need to talk to my school about that. I think they have the same problem.

[rentz]

What annoys me is the media acting like the glock and sig he used were full auto high caliber. They just said hi powered semi auto handguns.

[Heartland Patriot]

Gun control is the feel good solution. But like almost every feel good solution that the politicians come up with, it doesn't work. Ayoob is right on.

The solution is to train teachers and other to personnel in school to defend themselves and their students.

We need to have policies in place in each school that limits access during school hours to one point. But that doesn't do any good if the people at that point or immediately beyond it, as in this case, don't have any real means of stopping someone.

Lockdowns can work in the right situations although in this case it probably would have made it easier for the BG to kill more kids if he had not killed himself when he did.

Escape through windows could also work although in this case it appears most of the kids were killed in one classroom. Probably no time for escape there.

It appears to me that the only thing that really could have stopped this one is a couple people armed at the entrance.

I need to talk to my school about that. I think they have the same problem.

It seems to me that a big part of the problem is that a large portion of the folks on "the other side" are head-in-the-sand kind of people. They WANT the feelgood solutions because they DON'T WANT to have to think about it. They want someone ELSE to worry about it for them...and that isn't just this, but many things in life. CHLers at least admit that bad things CAN happen to good people and that its not always possible for someone else to handle the problem. I'm not sure how that gulf in thought processes can be bridged.

[TexasGal]

It is shocking to see how fast and how effectively the media has jumped on a wrenching tragedy of epic proportions not to focus attention on untreated or unrecognized dangerous individuals or inadequate school security, but to get their own agenda on gun control pushed to the front of everyone's mind. When was the last time you saw a story where a drunk or deranged person plowed through a bunch of innocent people with his car and the news focused on which kind of car it was, how fast it could go, how big was the motor? Let's talk about banning any car that will go faster than peddling speed... I am hearing nothing on the news that is balanced at all.

Why are we not discussing the fact this kid simply shot the glass out of a door and walked right into that school where not one armed person was present who could stop him? Maybe the doors to each classroom should have been locked as well as the exterior doors. Today, I read a kid in Oklahoma was arrested because he had been trying to recruit classmates to help him murder his classmates at school. I sure hope every school in this country is putting together a better plan today than they had yesterday starting with the doors and having armed protection.

[Skiprr]

It is shocking to see how fast and how effectively the media has jumped on a wrenching tragedy of epic proportions not to focus attention on untreated or unrecognized dangerous individuals or inadequate school security, but to get their own agenda on gun control pushed to the front of everyone's mind. When was the last time you saw a story where a drunk or deranged person plowed through a bunch of innocent people with his car and the news focused on which kind of car it was, how fast it could go, how big was the motor? Let's talk about banning any car that will go faster than peddling speed... I am hearing nothing on the news that is balanced at all.

This.

I am praying daily for every innocent victim, and for their families.

And I am praying daily for the Constitution of the United States of America.

[carlson1]

It is shocking to see how fast and how effectively the media has jumped on a wrenching tragedy of epic proportions not to focus attention on untreated or unrecognized dangerous individuals or inadequate school security, but to get their own agenda on gun control pushed to the front of everyone's mind. When was the last time you saw a story where a drunk or deranged person plowed through a bunch of innocent people with his car and the news focused on which kind of car it was, how fast it could go, how big was the motor? Let's talk about banning any car that will go faster than peddling speed... I am hearing nothing on the news that is balanced at all.

It was just this past week that another Professional Football player was involved in a DWI where his fellow friend and football player was killed.

There is no talk about sending these football players through a school on how to live their lives, etc. . .

Tonight on news the first story to follow this horrible Mass Murder was "gun shop owners" saying that anyone who is going to own a firearm needs to register it and have mandatory classes on how to use it.

[philip964]

In the schools I have designed, I have provided a way for the teacher to lock themselves in the room, while still providing the fire exiting features that are required.

There has never been a code or school district requirement that asked me to provide this locking capability, I just felt it was appropriate.

I noticed in one description it seemed the teachers were unable to keep the shooter out of their rooms. Does anyone know if this was the case?

[JALLEN]

It has been often said that "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." We demonstrate the accuracy of that premise nationally in our schools, which are almost unanimously gun-free zones, where possessing a gun is a serious crime, to responsible, law-abiding citizens anyway.

[RPB]

It is shocking to see how fast and how effectively the media has jumped on a wrenching tragedy of epic proportions not to focus attention on untreated or unrecognized dangerous individuals or inadequate school security, but to get their own agenda on gun control pushed to the front of everyone's mind. When was the last time you saw a story where a drunk or deranged person plowed through a bunch of innocent people with his car and the news focused on which kind of car it was, how fast it could go, how big was the motor? Let's talk about banning any car that will go faster than peddling speed... I am hearing nothing on the news that is balanced at all.

Why are we not discussing the fact this kid simply shot the glass out of a door and walked right into that school where not one armed person was present who could stop him? Maybe the doors to each classroom should have been locked as well as the exterior doors. Today, I read a kid in Oklahoma was arrested because he had been trying to recruit classmates to help him murder his classmates at school. I sure hope every school in this country is putting together a better plan today than they had yesterday starting with the doors and having armed protection.

Crime
Police: Okla. Teen Arrested After Plotting to Bomb, Gun Down Students in School Auditorium

Posted on December 15, 2012
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/police- ... uditorium/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

TheBlaze/AP) — An Oklahoma high school student is in custody on charges he plotted to bomb and shoot students at the Bartlesville High School auditorium on the same day 26 people were shot and killed at an elementary school in Connecticut.

They should pass more laws against bombs; that'd fix it... maybe a bomb-free-zone sign could help too.
I'd FEEL safer in a bomb-free zone ... wouldn't you? .... call the sign printer, I might get one for the house ... why didn't we think of that, posting signs in the 1960s when Cuba had Russian missiles, instead of ducking under the desks training ?
Bomb Free Zone sign
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photogr ... mage838762" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Beiruty]

What about each class room has fire exit door?! Many elem schools are one level. And in emergency all kids can exit the class and escorted by their teacher to safe place. Next week, I am asking our kids' principal for security review for our elem school. Now the school has open door policy.

[Steve133]

Since receiving my CHL not terribly long ago, it's been interesting to note how my thought processes regarding these sorts of incidents have changed. From a political/philosophical perspective, I've always been opposed to the usual knee-jerk demands for the government to DO SOMETHING, but I've recently begun thinking things over in more practical terms as well. Most of it amounts to armchair quarterbacking, and I usually eventually just write it off with a mental shrug after a while. For example, after the Aurora shooting, I ran the scenario through in my head many times, trying, as many people were, to decide how I would have reacted - would I have fought back? Simply taken cover? Made for an exit? All of the above? - and eventually decided that there were too many variables and unknowns to come to a firm decision.

Not today. Today, I can't help but thinking the same thing over again, a thought that I'm sure I share with most, if not all, of the responsible armed citizens in the country:

I could have stopped this.

This is an act of such sudden, unpredictable, indecipherable evil that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would have done something had I been present. I don't enjoy the thought of maiming or killing another human being, even one as depraved as this monster, but it's something that I've accepted as being an unfortunate inevitability in some scenarios in order to, to paraphrase Mas Ayoob, control the damage done and keep a bad situation from becoming even worse. All of which is an academic argument, since neither me nor anyone else would even be allowed to set foot in an elementary school while armed.

I've always dismissed the media response to these events and the popular internet sentiments that it tends to create as short-sighted and ill-informed, but this is the first time that it's actually frightened me. Whether intentionally or not, there is a perception in popular culture that guns and "gun culture" are somehow completely opaque to "common people," and that mystique (and the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that it creates) lets people completely dissociate their arguments from any semblance of logic. While reading a completely unrelated story, I stumbled across a blog post on Gawker (here, for the morbidly curious: http://gawker.com/5968542/) that contained this little gem about Michigan's recent decision to allow concealed carry in day cares: "Let's not."

Seriously? After all of the clamoring for a "meaningful debate" about gun laws, on a website that goes to great lengths to dispel and even ridicule the ideas that video games played any role in this tragedy, the best you can come up with is "Let's not"? No analysis, no reasoning, just an unthinking affirmation of the legal status quo that allowed this to happen in the first place. For the record, I happen to agree that any cultural posturing pointing the finger at modern entertainment (with the possible exception of the sensationalist news-as-entertainment trend that never fails to give these sick individuals their fifteen minutes of fame) misses the more fundamental issues of mental health and personal responsibility. But to try to find a deeper root cause for this senselessness than conveniently blaming them new-fangled vidyagames only to turn around and eagerly pin the blame on a different inanimate object that doesn't happen to be one of your own hobbies defies any rational explanation.

And there are plenty of people who are only too willing to jump on the bandwagon. I know this has been unbearably long-winded already, but there is a personal anecdote worth sharing:

A buddy of mine from college was in town visiting this weekend. This guy has been one of my closest friends for the past 7-8 years. We're both largely apolitical, but we do tend to agree on the few political points that come up in conversation - while neither of is exactly a card-carrying republican, we both tended to be on the more conservative-leaning and/or libertarian sides of political debates that cropped up when we were in school. His dad was career military, so he'd never had any sort of aversion to guns, but he'd never actually been shooting before; we'd talked several times about it, but only finally got around to a range trip yesterday.

It was the same story that you've all seen over and over again - he was initially just a little shy about actually (gasp!) touching a gun, but after a few magazines through the .22, he was having an absolute blast. Even mentioned the possibility of buying a gun himself, which he backed up by spending the rest of the day asking me questions about prices, calibers, availability, etc. Then the conversation turned to the Sandy Hook murders, and he asked my opinion on gun control - as delicately as I could, I observed that the strict NJ and CT gun laws and the gun-free school idea obviously hadn't helped much, so I was skeptical. He agreed, but added "well.... that makes sense, but I do agree that there's not much reason to own a high-power semi-automatic weapon. And the ban on high-capacity magazines does make sense."

I browbeat him with the statistically-proven uselessness of the AWB for a while, and the conversation moved on, but he still didn't seem convinced. This bothered me quite a bit. Later on, we went to a Christmas party being thrown by a coworker. The two of us were sitting and talking with a friend of mine from work, when my college buddy happens across the news story about the California incident and mentions it out loud.

My coworker let out a "Here we go again," and is quiet for a second. I like this guy a lot, but I know that he happens to lean a little more liberal than I do, so I brace myself for the inevitable argument; he's not a gun owner, and, like myself, is a young-ish tech/internet nerd, exactly the sort of person you'd think would jump on the gun-control bandwagon starting to spread around that community. But instead he says this: "Funny how this always happens in the states with the strictest gun-control laws. There's no way we'd put up with stuff like that in Texas - you're not going to shoot up a shopping mall if you know that half the people in there are armed. You try that kind of thing, and someone will just drop you. That's one thing at least that I love about living here."

Absolutely made my night.

[tacticool]

Making guns illegal to own will not stop such people. It will only be another choice of method. Perhaps the conversation should be aimed more at addressing the huge lack of adequate mental health treatment.

But the access to guns will be the main, if not the sole, topic of conversation.

It should be. When the legislature makes schools off limits for the good guys' guns, they help the bad guys kill more children. It's proven time and time again, so the legislators cannot reasonably expect us to believe they don't know it. The only question is why they choose to help mass murderers rack up a higher body count. That I cannot answer.

[wally775]

Interesting Things.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/newtown.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[jayinsat]

My coworker let out a "Here we go again," and is quiet for a second. I like this guy a lot, but I know that he happens to lean a little more liberal than I do, so I brace myself for the inevitable argument; he's not a gun owner, and, like myself, is a young-ish tech/internet nerd, exactly the sort of person you'd think would jump on the gun-control bandwagon starting to spread around that community. But instead he says this: "Funny how this always happens in the states with the strictest gun-control laws. There's no way we'd put up with stuff like that in Texas - you're not going to shoot up a shopping mall if you know that half the people in there are armed. You try that kind of thing, and someone will just drop you. That's one thing at least that I love about living here."

STEVE,
this gives me hope.

[powerboatr]

right after the ct state police briefing the CNN reporter paraphrased the previous remarks about how and why
now cnn is calling the bushmaster a FULL auto weapon, along with the glock and sig being autos as well with high capacity magazines(they used clip)

it seems lanza simply shot out the door and entered the school, he was found dead with over a 100 rounds left to expend.
and the 223 rounds are what he used to murder the children along with a few of the 9mm

so really unless the door was ballistic glass like in our other high security areas (jails, etc) there was no real way to stop the nut from getting, without having armed security on the other side of the door.

i commend the teachers fast actions by getting their students to a locked down "safe" zone.
the school obliviously had a plan and got it going, we may never know how many lives were saved by their swift actions. This guy was bent on killing and
most likely would have continued if the police hadn't arrived as fast as they did
100 rounds of 223 plus the ???? number of 9mm, he could have very easily murdered lots more
he got cowardly and took his life, so