The lesson here, and pretty much everywhere else you look is, yes. That’s the rational thing to do - the thing people keep doing. Reliably.
Sure, some people run -towards- the sound of gunfire and carnage.
Are there enough of them to go around?
NO.
In a movie, a gun gives an individual a great deal of power, the ability to dodge bullets, unlimited ammunition, and the dexterity of a woodland elf in a sixth franchise film.
Reality just keeps disagreeing with that outcome, however.
We may need to find a different way to stop violent assholes with assault rifles.
Can we actually be the hero? Can we outlaw being an asshole? Can we prevent people from accessing violence? If only we could get together and agree to something difficult, for a good reason, without whining. Unlimited guns isn’t working. Time for change.
Hello to all - sharing my perspective as an Australian
I dont think you can do much about an asshole with a gun who is really determined to kill as many people as possible. The gun could be a handgun, an AR-15 or whatever, sadly - I expect it is NOT hard to kill half a dozen people or more if you go crazy all of a sudden with a surprise attack in school. I expetc, that this event could happen anywhere in the world at any school with similar results. A good question to ask is WHY does it happen more in American schools than other countries? What is the root cause? Perhaps:
Because America has heaps more guns in circulation than in other countries? Makes it easier for a kid or nutcase or an asshole to get hold of one! In other countries it just isn’t as easy to get a gun, like in Australia or England or Sweden or Italy etc. It’s actually really hard to do it in Australia, even farmers get audited once a year by police.
Because America has a strong gun culture and a LOVE of firearms? I assume many kids grow up being told GUNS ARE GOOD and they should have one like Dad does? etc. etc.? so many American heroes and role models who solve problems with GUNS - just think of the movies and TV and the constant gun worship kids see. And then there is the NRA and the RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. A huge PRO GUN movement who advertise and lobby. Then you have the gun industry with advertisements and fairs etc. promoting guns! Salesmen telling you why you should have one!
I think the best way to address the problem is for ‘cultural change’ and a firearm prohibition scheme. Obviously both those solutions are going to take a LONG time, but it could start now, and over 10 years heaps of guns could be destroyed or bought back by the government and education policy at school to address gun culture along with government advertising campaign.
I admit, I’ve been out of school for awhile and didn’t have to deal with any guards.
Is it common now for school security personnel to wear military grade body armour and high caliper weaponry? I typically would envision them being no more armed than any foot cop on the streets.
I don’t agree with you that @trogdor suggests that the singular cause of lung cancer is smoking.
But it is also not the point he makes. The point is that cigarettes cause lung cancer, we know this and because of that we are discouraging people from smoking.
When we compare this to guns and gun violence (where the causal link is even stronger) there is a lot less going on to limit the amount of gun availability.
What @trogdor tries to highlight is how ridiculous it is to say gun violence can be stopped by anything else besides limiting the amount of available guns.
Thanks much for providing an example. Yes, that long skinny north-south wing is a potential problem. Bad design, especially since it has under 1000 students and shouldn’t need such a long floor plan. Nevertheless, it looks like there are stairwells that would let you get closer by approaching from another floor.
I haven’t looked at the details (bleh), but Cruz entered the building, pulled the fire alarm, shot for two minutes, dropped the gun and left, all within seven minutes.
I don’t know if anyone could have effectively dealt with that without omniscience and perfect hindsight. I think that the moment he was inside the school with an AR-15, it was too late. (Short of a movie action hero on the stairs when Cruz walked in.)
Entirely likely. But the thing is, these GGGs didn’t even try. If they had made a honest attempt, even if it was an unsuccessful one, I don’t think anyone would be blaming them here.
And they’ll be briefly lauded as heroes, with the (often plainly spoken) subtext that regular people can’t/won’t/shouldn’t do such things. A few people like you, a few communities will truly honor their humanity, but most of the world will consider them anomalies, not regular people doing their best in an impossible situation. Children won’t be told to emulate them, instead they’ll be told that such heroes are a separate special class, like cops and soldiers, not just regular people doing the right thing.
In five years time the number of people who know the shooter’s name will be ten times the number that know of Aaron Feis, Chris Hixon and Scott Beigel.
Edit: Revised to be less bitter. “I don’t like Mondays.”
Does that mean we can get rid of his secret service protection? Obviously he is a super man that does not need to hide behind the most intensive personal security in the world. Since he is all about saving tax payers $$ it would only make sense because he is all about self sacrifice.
I don’t want to say where I’m from originally, since I try to make reverse engineering my online identity at least mildly difficult. But I can tell you that my middle school was laid out like a Roman numeral “II” (imagine the serifs), and the short corridor at the top went from Room 102 to Room 136 by even numbers–so, at least 18 classrooms long. How long is a classroom from end to end–25 feet? 30? And that’s the short axis.
My high school, which was built about a decade later, had a more compact layout overall, but it also had a main “avenue” meant to let you ascend two floors using a wheelchair. Every foot of rise requires 12 feet of run for that, so ascending (let’s say) 20 feet would take 240 feet of ramp, and that ramp was not even half of the entire length of that corridor, since the gym and the cafeteria were on the other side of it.
This is just how they built schools in the 'burbs in a certain era. They’re not enormously long, for the buildings they’re in. But they’re big buildings.
Here’s my point. I’m sure there are rabbit-warren schools out there where in a tactical duel of some sort, a handgun wouldn’t be at a terrible disadvantage. There are also open-plan schools–literally without interior walls–where it’d be even worse.
But the people who want 18-year-olds to be able to buy assault weapons also want you thinking you need a pistol to keep you safe from them. Heroic fantasizing, like Trump publicly engaged in just this morning, has sold more guns than anything else in the history of firearms. Don’t play into that. If we don’t want every cop to be armed like a one-person SWAT team, then the only alternative is to make it less likely that they’ll be facing military weapons.
I was under the impression that Donald Trump suffered from crippling bone spurs that prevented him from running at all, particularly in the direction of live weapon fire.
