Houston School Shooting

[TAZ]

I'm curious specifically about a "statewide threat assessment system," and "creating incentives for students to share information about potential threats...." That sort of sounds like he's proposing a surveillance network that would encourage teenagers to report one another.

I’d like to see the specifics of these plans before making a final decision. You’d be surprised at the need for state wide communication. Wife is a teacher and even within state of TX transfers aka a family has moved, the efficiency with which a child’s information follows is sloth like. Consider that MANY “trouble maker” families move around, not because they are expanding careers, but because they are on the verge of being identified; the need for efficient communication is vital. Without data, documented data, not opinions, children won’t get any help. Teachers KNOW the kid is either struggling academically, socially or is a bloody psychopath, but they are literally powerless to get them help without proper TPS forms filled out in heptiplicate. Some smaller districts may be able to cut through the clutter, but most will struggle with the needed documentation. All that means that when a kid moves and their documented issues don’t follow for months and months the new school starts from zero. When it’s all said and done a year has passed and the kid has lost an academic year, putting them further behind. Or they have struggled socially, been a bully, a thug... Then when they are on the verge of being identified they up and leave and the cycle starts over. Communication stern district as students move about is VITAL to making sure fewer kids fall between the cracks.

As for the reporting. We already encourage kids to speak up. Again are they incentivizing the individual reporters or the district to create an efficient way for kids to be able to report the next shooter?

The biggest question for me on these see something say something plans is what actions are taken? Are we going to do the Florida thing and even though the shooter was identified by name nothing happened or can we somehow investigate and act? Are we going to punish fraudulent reporting? What are we going to do when a district ignores a named threat, but suspends a child for posting videos of legal activity...

[JodyH]

Two points:
Until we can weed out incompetence at the administration level there's nothing that can be done, and that will never happen.

We also need to put things in perspective. 50 people per year are struck and killed by lightning in the US.
School shootings don't reach those numbers even when "stacking the deck" with every shooting can that can be remotely associated with a school.
For the entire decade of the 2000's there were 107 school related deaths from firearms (this includes Virginia Tech at 33), when you drill down nearly half of the deaths were either adults shooting each other or criminals shooting each other on school property (no school kids involved at all). The numbers are also skewed by listing the gunman as a "victim" if they suicided or were killed by LE.
A true count of school shooting deaths for the entire decade would be <50.
In that same period there were approximately 500 deaths from lightning strikes.

Not only is there very little than can be done, very little actually needs to be done except for greater vigilance by school staff, administration and LE.

[UNM1136]

Two points:
Until we can weed out incompetence at the administration level there's nothing that can be done, and that will never happen.

We also need to put things in perspective. 50 people per year are struck and killed by lightning in the US.
School shootings don't reach those numbers even when "stacking the deck" with every shooting can that can be remotely associated with a school.
For the entire decade of the 2000's there were 107 school related deaths from firearms (this includes Virginia Tech at 33), when you drill down nearly half of the deaths were either adults shooting each other or criminals shooting each other on school property (no school kids involved at all). The numbers are also skewed by listing the gunman as a "victim" if they suicided or were killed by LE.
A true count of school shooting deaths for the entire decade would be <50.
In that same period there were approximately 500 deaths from lightning strikes.

Not only is there very little than can be done, very little actually needs to be done except for greater vigilance by school staff, administration and LE.

Amen, my brother from an aparently combative mother. Might want to analyze those numbers a little more for accuracy's sake, but even CNN, using the FBI's numbers concluded that the average person is more likely to be struck by lightening than be killed by an active shooter. The average high school student is more likely to die in a car on the way to or from school, or during school sanctioned sports practice on a school owned field, than by a shooter in the school. I other than the death toll I agree with you 100%.

School shootings in the US go back to 1794. The deadliest act of school violence was in 1925. If statistics and numbers matter (and the left will tell us that they do) then they matter, regardless what conclusions can be reasonably reached by using them.

pat

[Joe in PNG]

If a kid can’t like guns, or enjoy shooting without fear of being reported by the brownshirts for wrongthink, then the next generation of 2A supporters is going to be smothered in the womb.

The more you try to demonize something, the more "dangerous" that item becomes, and thus the more "bad in a hip, radical, cool" way it becomes. Gun people are now counter cultural rebles.
Paradoxically, the anti-gunners are actually responsible for the rise of Gun Culture 2.0, and the mass ownership of "assault" weapons.

The smart move on their part would be to say and do nothing- because complacency on the part of gun owners could be their most powerful tool, as it was in the Fudd era.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I've been hit by lightning in a university parking lot. Was that a divine school shooting. So I am confused at to risk. Just some levity in a serious and contentious thread.

A friend survived a DC-8 crash. It ran out of fuel and came down in the forest. The passengers in the front were killed. He made it with his wife and kid in the back.

In a class, the teacher brought out - Well, it's as rare as being hit by lightning or being a Jet plane crash. We both started waving our arms at him.

There's no real solution or defensive action in terms of fortification of schools that cannot be beaten or without causing soft target substitution. I'm for carry and that folks who carry train up.

When someone says that we need more police, look at the best response time and compared it to a good competitive shooter with 9 targets with two shots each. Police can never beat that time. Perhaps someone in the scene could draw and fire (if not immediately shot).