Why Schools?

[Big Steve]

Why are all these shootings happening in schools? I would guess that because some of them are done by disgruntled students. But not all of them. That guy that shot up the amish school wasn't a student. The nut in Calif. with the AK was not a student. Is the stress of school enough to push the students over the edge? Is it that when a nut that isn't a student decides to go on a shooting spree that they figure a school will cause the most outrage? How about Post Offices why so many postal workers going off the deep end and shooting the place up? Has it not happened enough times in schools that the schools need to prepare for it. They have fire drills, how about shooter at the school drills. It's a horrable thought that it might happen at your school but it might save some kids. Just some thoughts.
Don't hold me to any of them!
Steve

[turbothis]

its only a matter of time before the goverment locks us up into pods like the matrix!:offhead:

[Norton]

Because a manic can shoot alot of helpless people who won't be able to shot him back. Try that at a truck stop, used car lot or a constuction project, he would not make 32 dead before somebody put a 357 or 30 30 in his hide

[Planning]

it seams the cowards like to go into "gun free zones" to do there thing. nobody shooting back until they get thru and then shoot themselves. it's real shame they don't just start with themselves first.

[weasel_master]

I would guess because of the easy targets. The guy in Vt was an english major, not what I would look at as far as a high stress degree, my opinion only. You would have to be pretty ruthless and friendless to do it at school though. I can't imagine shooting anyone let alone someone you knew or were friends with.
On the school drill issue, they had a scenario on the weekend at our school once. A pretty big lawsuit came out of it though as a teacher came in to do some work and the swat guys roughed her up. She was unaware they were training and they thought she was the "uncooperative suspect". I agree maybe it's something they should think about though. With the number of people on campus I know that have their CCW, there isn't a building there that wouldn't have an armed citizen in them.

[okie shooter]

Much of it is due to the places that cause the most disapointment to those who are on the edge, the other place lots of mass murders occour are at work, acutally more of them, just less numbers of deaths many times. When the person is pushed over the edge they go after the things that caused the disapointment.

[cimmaronkid]

+1 for Okie. He is right on target with his reply. I am still waiting for one of these nut jobs to go down to his local police station and try the same stupid crap. Wonder how many victims he will get then.

[iocane]

Yep, the no guns allowed is the common element.


I do remeber a English class that required us all to read a book that started with the main character strangling his girlfreind, the rest of the book was just plain bizarre. How about not requiring any books like that.

[Grasshopper]

+1 for Okie. He is right on target with his reply. I am still waiting for one of these nut jobs to go down to his local police station and try the same stupid crap. Wonder how many victims he will get then.

Ohh, bad, in this day and age the Police chief, a fat woman with a beard, would tell her officers to lay down their weapons because they didn't have athority to fire their firearms in a building down town. Then..... she'd try to talk to the whacko and get shot first. Here comes internal affairs. She (the leader of internal affairs) runs into the room where the shooter is and lifts up the visor of her Police Cap that is too big for her head to see what the situation is all about and who is going to be thrown off the force for discharging a firearm in the building "down town" and gets shot before she can get her cap visor over her nose..... should I go on?:century:

[tanstaafl4y]

+1 for Okie. He is right on target with his reply. I am still waiting for one of these nut jobs to go down to his local police station and try the same stupid crap. Wonder how many victims he will get then.


Fairfax County Virginia May 2006

[jlpskydive]

Fairfax County Virginia May 2006

Yea but, that place is full of real sickos!! I outa know as I lived there for many years. And he only got two not 32 and did not die by his own hand. Two is still too many but, like I stated before one armed person in one of those rooms and the story is alot different.

[okie shooter]

+1 for Okie. He is right on target with his reply. I am still waiting for one of these nut jobs to go down to his local police station and try the same stupid crap. Wonder how many victims he will get then.
Cimmaronkid, the guy leading the pack in mass murder with guns and such is a south korean policeman, Woo Bum-Kon , who got over fifty. He was depressed, raided the police armory where he worked, and used firearms and hand grenades, to kill 57 people. Thus even police men are pushed to the limits. The federal agent in florida last year was just one short of being defined as a mass killer though he just took two lives plus his own, thus even leo are not above this phemomia.

As for going to a police station, many police orgnizations require lock up of firearms where prisioners are involved. Even police have some no firearms policies too.

On early morning I was at the Jail/PD(unique in Manhattan but there is only one law enforcement agency, its a combined city county pd) and there were shots heard out side of the jail(its three or four in the morning) and boy you should have seen the responce to that, just less than a block away, but many of the officers had to get their sidearms out of the locker in the jail. The guy was caught, he was drunk and celebrating a football victory, and laughingly a aquaintance of my father and myself. We later wrote the bail bond on the guy, but when it first hit you didnt know what was up at the complex.

[jlpskydive]

Just for clarification the Va incident was not an LEO that went nuts but, two LEO's were killed. The gunman was then captured. It's amazing what happens when people shoot back.

[SteelCore]

Why? Heres why…compiled from all of your posts...

1. they figure a school will cause the most outrage
2. Because a maniac can shoot alot of helpless people who won't be able to shot him back
3. "gun free zones"
4. When the person is pushed over the edge they go after the things that caused the disapointment.

I’ll add because 'terrorists' want hi-profile, target rich environments for high visibility and emotional impact.

“school drill issue”
 I like the idea of it, if it involves armored safe rooms, or mebbe something more active…I’m sure some folks are hard at work on the ideas part…

The next question is: "How do we take proactive action to prevent or mitigate the damage caused at these targets? I'll start with:
Eliminate 'gun free zones' When a teacher has a valid CCW, maybe he/she candidly submits paperwork to the school, and they pay to send him/her to a CQB or tactical/defensive shooting training. No student or anyone else need know who these 'guardians' are, just that they are there...just putting that out in the media that there are such anonymous folks might make the disgruntled student (or whomever) think twice about opening up. [Really, all of us who carry and are shooters or trained with the use of firearms are the 'guardians' of society as a whole, many with a heightened situational awareness and the ability to act, and the ethics/morality to act rightly and with the force needed]

Gun education and training, gun awareness classes: The only real fear is the fear of the unknown (IMHO)...The ignorance of weapons leads to an irrational fear of weapons, which in the mind of the ignorant blossoms, making the weapon all-powerful (the "I'm the one with the gun" syndrome)...

Example: On 9/11, a few guys with intent, harsh words, and boxcutters cowed a planeful of people into inaction--because most have not seen someone exsanguinate a person right in front of them. Were those folks able to analyze the situation, known the limitations of the tool in use and the limitations of a human using the tool (situational awareness), they could have acted without thinking, using defensive objects or freakin’ carryon luggage to mass rush these folks B4 anything went down. [This is how the got Richard Reid, the shoe bomber...they saw him tweaking with this shoes, messing with a lighter, and smothered him with bodies until he could be properly disarmed and restrained.

So, EDUCATION takes a front seat. ppl must accept certain harsh realities that bad things DO happen to good people, and good ppl can mitigate the damage by being trained by those who know how to respond to such bad people.
[Sensei/Dr Massaki Hatsumi once was asked by a student "We learn all these moves that would dissect a human like a ham, horrid, terrible things, arterial cuts, disembowling, limb breaking, skin tearing--how can you teach us these terrible things? How can it be right?" Sensei answered "There must be those who can respond to the wrongdoers with the things they can understand...ethical people willing to do these things."]
People like Law enforcement, Martial Arts instructors, Military folks, and a good crosscut of the civvies can teach the skills that shape the mind into an effective instrument, and make a person more aware of their situation, know when to apply aggression and force, and knowledge alone will conquer the fear of inaction. They will know that the 'weapon' in the baddies hands is only as sharp or accurate, or fast as his adrenaline clouded mind, that subterfuge and other tools are there to give them an edge, and that their mind is a better weapon.
A person with training responds to threats through the training taking over--training makes learned actions a 'hardwired response'...[I've given the Heimlich maneuver twice to folks, and I didn't have to think, only respond--my body knew what to do without me having to think about the adrenaline, where the floating ribs were, etc]...Stopping to think is what happened to the passengers on our plane in the above example. The brain robbed them of action...

All this might seem scary to folks at first, because it is 'unknown' to them, but as we all do, we overcome our fears thru knowledge, facing those unknowns to make them known...I call this EMPOWERMENT.

No one has to be a hero, everyone just needs to know the mind is the weapon, the stuff ppl call weapons are tools, extensions of the real weapon.

I've rambled enough on this topic, but I am passionate about eliminating victims from society by means of education. And yes, Virginia, sometimes good ppl have to do horrible things to horrible ppl.

I have a 4-yr old daughter, and I will work hard to empower her so sh can empower herslef...I ain't raising no victim.

I hope, then that maybe there will be more folks like on flight 93 who saw their opportunity, or the teachers and students who barricaded doors so Cho couldn't get back in, and could only fire thru the door and move on, or the student whose quick action and direction made other students help erect a defense of desks, or the newly deuputized Iraqi policeman who confronted a bomber at the polls for Iraqi elections, the folks who jumper R Reid...the patron of the bar that used a mere .380 to stop a shooter from reloading and firing more, etc.

And a big thanks to all of you out there who are already doing/done your part to stop baddies here and abroad, without thanks or the intention of getting any. You just did the right thing, and I thank you.

[okie shooter]

Steelcore, for schools, all of the shootings of adults by adults at schools are due to rage issues towards the folks at the school(the california preschool shooting was not fitting the normal mass murder rage idea, maybe more pstd problem there). Schools are targeted because the shooter has a axe to grind there not due to the fact they are gun free zones, and will cause rage. They are angry at some one or some idea that the school repesents. Thus why schools and work sites are the most common sites of outlets of this scale of rage. The fact its a gun free zone(most schools and even work places are consided such) really doesnt factor into the equation of the typical mass murderer, they are going to kill no matter what. Its just a fact after the fact.

The shootings at most lower institutions of learning arent of the same pattern, they are group activities(useally two or more plotting), even Collenbine was a mix of mass murder and the killings of adolesents as a group activity. The typical mass murder is a loner, white male, though there have been other minorties and some women. There mostly is a factor that some group or institution has done them wrong, but guns are not the only weapon used, the PSA Flight 1771 killer used a gun to shoot the flight crew but it was the plane crashing that caused most of the deaths.

From reading it seems the third most common place for mass murders with or without firearms are homes, killing friends and family. There its trust causing the ease of access to kill. Look up the guy in Dover/Russelville Ar, killed most of his family then drove into town and killed those that he felt had done him wrong.

[SteelCore]

...but the heart of my solution is not aimed at the motives/motivation for location of said psychopathic misanthrope, but how ppl can act to mitigate the damage (or pre-empt the act by those right-acting folks) in the location that said psycho loses it.

In this way, ppl can defend against/avoid psychos, chechen rebels, terrorists, violent drunks, crunks (perro!:icon_cool: ), rapists, crackheads, the one-armed man from _Fugitive_, aliens with no mind-control abilities, and in general people with poor impulse control.

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