Jeff Toorish is an especially lucid writer on this topic. K&R

I teach at a Head Start and have been amazed by the comments some of the people I know are making about this issue. There is no way in the world that I want to be armed around 3 and 4 year old children. The thought of this makes me cringe! Just the image of guns being in my classroom, concealed or not makes me feel so frightened for the well being of those very precious children.

forward into the world. Our educational system would be endorsing violence to cure violence and we would be creating a generation of monsters.

well said......

with ALL credit to you, it's author, of course.

... who posted it to the politico article I linked to. Since it is on politico and on Facebook, it is meant to be shared. Give Jeff Toorish the credit and include the Poltico link.

classroom allowing children and teachers to get out quickly.


outstanding

Every gun is a means to kill.

Where is the money going to come from to redesign every school in the nation? Some schools are three stories.

but I do see what you are saying, such a short post is easy to misinterpret. adding an extra door to every classroom would take an enormous amount of funds, and even limiting it to first story rooms, there are schools that are very spread out, and have a hundred rooms or more at ground level.

and you are all as wrong as they were back then.

How expensive is it to lose a son or daughter?

Are you really saying it's too expensive to redesign schools, at least on the first floor, so the kids don't get shot? We aren't talking about major construction projects, here. Cutting a new door, even in a brick wall, is a relatively simple matter, you know...

Why with less than 4.5% of the worlds population, do we need one half of the world's supply of guns?

Do you have any idea how many schools there are in this country? Schools are public buildings. Any modification done to them must be to code. Among other things, that means meetings, architects for the blue prints that must be drawn up for each and every school. Bids let. You can't just go out and hire some contractor friend to cut a hole in the wall and slip a door in. We are talking many tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per school.
In other words, it is not like your house, where you can just chainsaw in a new door wherever you want.

But with most problems there are a number of different solutions. Some more important than others, but it doesnt have to be one or the other. Go ahead and get rid of the guns. You are quick to argue about the expense to modify schools but dont present a recommendation on how the hell we get rid of the millions of guns in this country. And at what expense?

How about this, while you are figuring out how to take guns away from citizens, let's work on modifications to our schools. Making a exit is only one recommendation. I have a number of recommendations. More cameras. All visitors must wear badges they get from the office. Only one entrance. Lots of exits. Ability to isolate sections of the school. No large bags allowed in without inspection. Lockers instead of backpacks in the rooms. There are lots of ways, some not expensive that can improve the security at our schools. None of these suggestions are fool proof but any improvement that reduces the chances of a re-occurrence of these terrible tragedies is worth it.

Like they do in all of the schools that I have ever seen with doors out of classrooms.

Every room should have two access points for fire safety anyway.

Closed circuit with video. A lot of training. When we were kids we were trained to hide under our desks (in the event of a nuclear attack - really).

Lots of things that can be done to make classrooms safer. Including restricting 30 round and drum magazines.

You said it more articulately than I ever could. I'll be quoting you everywhere!

People who KNOW what they're talking about.

I agree. Now I just want to know if you think the AWB is a good idea.

...think that it did not go far enough. It is fine to outlaw a "style" of weapon since that gets to the cultural aspect - the weapon as a "cool" product that is marketed as a social expression product (or maybe anti-social expression). But I don't think it goes far enough to do as much good as we would hope. I think we need to ban or restrict automatic fire weapons in general.

By the way, the OP is not by me, I copied it from a Poltico / Facebook comment. So I cannot answer questions with the knowledge, experience or authority that the post implies. Follow the Politico link, scroll down to the comments, and you can "like" or message the true author.

having done so in Iraq. And will again if needed. To Kill. People.

very well said.

for self defense.

The OP is posting from the perspective of someone who has a reasonable chance of surviving in case an intruder comes into his home. As a woman living alone, I stand almost no chance against an intruder. A gun is an equalizer. Yes, I have the locks, the lights, the dogs....and the gun.

Yes, an intruder can take it from me and kill me with it. But I'm so outmatched by the intruder that he doesn't even need a gun to kill me. He can easily do that with no weapon at all (his hands and arms being his weapons). I, on the other hand, will lose in arm to arm combat with him. I probably can't outrun him, either. His hands are much larger than mine, his arms are much longer than mine...he's faster, he's stronger, and he's probably a street guy who won't fall to the ground even when shot with a small .22 pistol.

I have stopped an intruder with my pistol before. It's a fact of life that women living alone are common targets of criminals. They go for the more vulnerable: women (who are likely more passive, likely not armed, and are weaker), and children, and the elderly.

I have been followed to the grocery store, yelled at from distances by strange men, honked at, smooched at, lectured by strange men, touched by strange men, and several have attempted to get into my home. This is not the life that men lead, so I don't expect them to realize what it's like. But a woman alone is at a much higher risk of danger than a man, just by virtue of her gender.

It must be wonderful to be a male like the OP, to know that his body is a weapon, so he may not need a gun. To know that he will not be targeted for crime, just because of what he is. For us peons, though, who have not much else to protect ourselves with, a gun helps equalize the situation. It's not a cure-all. If the use of it can be avoided, that is best. But if I'm cornered, can't flee, and someone is coming at me...I need a weapon, or I am at his mercy. Even a bat would be helpful, but I'm getting older and not that strong, any more. And bats are bulky to keep handy.

I don't reject or judge you for keeping a gun in the home.

However, though I am also an older and single woman, I have a different view and approach.

I live in an urban, transitional neighborhood that isn't the highest crime area in the city, but does have frequent crime. I also live 2 blocks from a police substation - which may be how we differ.

I have an alarm system that is LOUD. I know most of my neighbors, and am on good terms with them - and they know that I am a single lady - who works very long hours and often is away during the weekends.

I am alerted if something is "off" when I am not home. If I am home and I know I am not expecting someone at the door - I don't answer. Anyone who knows me would call me in advance. At evening, I don't care who you are - if you don't know me, I am not going to answer the door.

If the knocking/ringing the bell persists, I call the neighbors across the street and ask them to look - as I turn the front lights on. I make a fuss.

Because I am in an urban setting, where houses are relatively close together, I know that home invasions are often approached opportunistically. That is - when one is likely able to quickly get in and out without being seen or detected. My approach is to make my home inopportune, and my neighbors help with that (as I help with their homes.)

I don't have a gun. Indeed I fear guns, and wouldn't be good with one. It is sort of like a sports car that can go 150 mph. Such a vehicle is more dangerous in the hands of someone who does not understand how to handle such a vehicle at such speeds. I fear guns, because I work with urban youth (and have for decades), and have directly or indirectly experienced the aftermath of between 15-20 deaths at the hands of guns.

My reality is different than yours. I understand your reason for wanting that protection. As a survivor of a violent attack in my youth, I get it. I just am able and choose to find a different solution to finding a sense of security in my own home.

For me, not having a gun in the home is a very good idea. But I also have in place other contingency plans that I have used (successfully.) If I lived in an isolated area, my contingency plans would be spectacularly ineffective.

My point is there is no absolute/singular way to protect ourselves that works for all people. I don't object to your post title for you, but I do object to it as a blanket statement for "everyone else."

Peace.

But it's still a largish city with crime, and I live within the loop. We have a neighborhood watch, and I have security system signs on every side of my house, and some on the windows.

I also am reasonably comfortable with guns, having been raised around them. I've been to the target range only three times and discovered I was a good shot (years of playing foosball and tennis, maybe?).

As I said, I used a gun before to stop an intruder before he got in. That's the best use of a gun. Criminals tend to be afraid of a nervous, scared woman waving a gun around. He was a burglar, though, who probably thought no one was home.

It's just a tool, like locked doors and outside lights. I learned from experience that the police cannot respond to a 911 call as quickly as you can get hurt from a criminal. So you're really on your own for a while. In the old days, when women lived out in the country and were on their own with their children for long stretches of time, while men left to find work elsewhere, or would spend all day in the fields, it was common for women to have guns for protection. Although I'm a city woman, I come from a long line of country people who lived out in the boondocks. You really were on your own, as far as safety was concerned. And guns were respected for the damage they could do.

It's a matter of choice. I choose to have a gun, as an added layer of protection.

A man at my office killed an intruder in the middle of the night, when he saw the dark figure crawling across his bedroom floor. He was an unarmed burglar, but even so...had that intruder been in my home, would he have also taken the opportunity to rape the single woman there, and then kill her so he doesn't leave a witness? Intruding into someone's home in the middle of the night, when the homeowner is home....and openly crawling across the floor while the homeowner sleeps in the same room...how ballsy is that?

I'm lying in bed decades ago, while I hear the screen on my bedroom window being cut. Making noise to break in, while I'm home. How ballsy is that? Had to know I lived there; I lived in an out of the way place behind someone's house.

Another time, a man driving by saw me standing outside. He came to an abrupt stop. I had a feeling it wasn't good, so I quickly walked back into the apt I lived in at the time. Just as I locked the door, his hand hit the doorknob at the same time. A huge, bulky guy. He starts banging on my door and loudly cursing at me. Not sure what he's saying, but he's pissed that I've locked the door. Broad daylight. No one comes to check it out. I'm on my own. I have no back door. After a couple of minutes he leaves. If he had not left...what then? Well, I had a .22 pistol. Pretty small, but still, it was something. I was petrified. Glad he left.

This is the world a woman alone lives in. Maybe not you. But we all have our experiences. I will not be raped and murdered by an intruder without at least putting up a fight and trying to stop him in his tracks. It's important to stop an intruder before he gets within arms' length of you (since his arms are longer than yours).

God made man Colt made them equal.

Gun nuts are called "nuts" for a reason.

with a dirty bomb is a GOOD guy with a dirty bomb...or the only way to stop a bad guy with a biological weapon is with a GOOD guy with a biological weapon...INSANITY! This guy makes a million dollars a year on the corpses of children and innocents!

neutralize an attacker who also has a gun. A crossbow or an axe or even a rock might also work, but a gun is what we give soldiers and police to neutralize enemies who also have guns, because they are effective tools at getting the job done.

I don't think even Jack Bauer would do as you suggest LaPierre is claiming.

...its a bit embarrassing to have people think I wrote it.

may also be afraid of leaving this world by themselves, so they decide to kill others so they won't have to go alone. I seem to remember being told something like this by a police officer, many years ago.

So, you are correct. Putting armed guards into schools will not deter deranged persons from going into schools or other crowded public places so they can go out "with a blaze of glory".

And sounds so close to home.

I know you did not write it but...

Just one thing, and this s DU copyright. Use up to four paragraphs and link from there.

I have broken this rule, rarely, when I am the author.

(1) President Reagan was surrounded by trained heavily armed secret service and was wounded nearly killed.

(2) The NRA-GOP keeps cutting schools and cutting cops.

(3) The Sandy Hook incident just trained every Al Qaeda wannabe in the United States how to get a real media sensation for the cause, using only legally obtainable stuff.

(4) Every classroom needs a cop. Every playground, Every soccer game, Every one of the fleet of school buses, Every Prom, Every Homecoming Game, Every school picnic. Every Field Trip...

(5) The NRA PRESIDENT raised a bad man with a gun, and was unable to stop him with the standard background check from getting guns despite the boy hospitalized for emotional problems a number of times as a juvenile.

(6) Two weeks ago Adam Lanza and Jacob Roberts (Clackamas Mall Shooter with AR-15) would have passed a federal background check, and being young and CHEAP they might have preferentially gotten the rent-a-cop jobs.

Such as reinstating the assault weapons ban, closing gun-show proxy purchase loopholes, etc.

This country's deadly-weapons fetish is a genuine public health issue, and getting strong laws on the books is a start in changing the way guns are perceived.

To say, ". . . there were armed guards at Columbine . . .," is really to say it all.

So you have a guard with a gun in a school full of hundreds of frightened kids, one of whom is an armed murderer? What is he supposed to do, shoot every kid who might be holding a gun until he shoots the right one? As a plan to save lives it is pure madness!

It's not very hard to distinguish the bad guy. He's the one who is trying to kill every last human being in sight.

How on earth do you think police and tactical teams stop a shooter? Do you think they just hold their fire until the shooter becomes bored or hungry and wanders off?

If this weren't true, we would not need cops. We put cops on the streets, in banks, in airports, at concerts, and anywhere else that people might need to be protected from other people.

The notion that simply stationing cops in schools will somehow make matters worse is, in my opinion, an emotional reaction, a reflexive recoiling from the though of a gun. it is not a logical one. The argument that more cops (guns) equals more violence is analogous to more tow trucks equaling more broken down vehicles. There's no correlation.

Cops don't create violence by being in a place. Cops are in a place as a response to violence, or the threat of violence.

Adam Lanza went on a 10 minute rampage. It ended when cops, guys with guns, showed up. If they had showed up after 5 minutes, the rampage would have ended after 5 minutes. If they had showed up after 30 seconds, it would have ended after 30 seconds. See where this is going?

Yeah, there was a cop at Columbine. He shot at Harris from a distance greater than half the length of a football field. There are probably 10 people in the world who could have put him down with a handgun at that distance. But he was able to call for backup and report the shooter's location. Did his action reduce the death toll? It's impossible to say. But it surely didn't increase it.

A cop's gun is never, not in 10,000 years, going to leap out of its holster and start shooting children. A cop isn't going to shoot into a crowd of children hoping to wing a shooter. People run away from a shooter, not towards him. A cop could at the very least pin down a shooter until a tactical team arrives.

Now, I'm not crazy. I know that it will be impossible to place a trained officer in every school. Since our first and foremost task is to protect our children, I think the most logical and cost-effective action to take would be hardened doors with a deadbolt in all our classrooms, along with an intruder warning system that would alert the school population to take cover in a secure location behind a steel door, or to just exit the building.

The next task is to begin the long process of ridding ourselves of assault-style weapons and large capacity magazines. And we can't grandfather them - there are literally tens of millions of them out there. They need to be collected, possibly with compensation. It will take years to collect them, but we have to find the will to resist the NRA and get it done. These objects need to go because they are intimately tied into these wacko's fantasies of death and destruction. Shootings will still happen, but the glamour of a huge body count will fade.

LaPierre may or may not be crazy, but I think the overwhelmingly negative response to his press conference and follow-up statements is an emotional reaction to the messenger, not the message. In the early 90s, Bill Clinton spent millions to place cops in schools as a response to Columbine, and everyone (except the Repubs) seemed to think it was a great idea then. It's impossible to say if police presence has prevented any shootings. We'll just never know. But to claim that the mere presence of a cop will make things worse is just nonsense, in my opinion. We teach our kids to respect and obey the police, not fear them. Children will not be traumatized by the sight of an armed cop. They see them all the time now.

I hope people can approach this terrible problem with solutions that have a chance of working, as opposed to just being politically correct.

trusted with a spoon, let alone a firearm. Good work.

This from your first post:

Life is a game of playing the odds, and for my money, if someone is trying to murder me (or my child), I'd rather have a cop around than my priest or my accountant.

Your mileage may vary.

analysis. However, I must take exception to the idea of evacuating students from buildings under assault, even first floor classrooms, gyms, auditoriums, libraries and cafeterias. I am a high school teacher and have combat experience (those are my bona fides). While there is no perfect solution, I have given this subject considerable thought for a long time now. I am convinced that a rapid, coordinated lock down of kids behind impenetrable doors and windows is the best way to reduce casualties and that changing out doors and windows in schools would be less expensive and a better solution than any other. Here's why:
1. Any intrusion will be over in a short time. SWAT teams will have entered the building and killed the intruder or he will have killed himself.
2. People secured in safe classrooms and common areas will not be shot by the intruder, caught in a crossfire or accidentally killed by the cavalry. They are also less likely to panic than if they are exiting the building because of the close proximity of adult authority.
3. Once the incident is over, normal, rapid attendance procedures can be taken to account for everyone, identify anyone harmed or missing and assist medical personnel, after which normal evacuation or dismissal procedures can commence.

I know that hunkering down versus making a break for it is conterintuitive, but I honestly believe it's the best procedure when large numbers of people and especially children are involved..

Local police depending upon their location at the time could be 30 minutes away. I doubt the first on the scene would enter the building without backup. They often have a backup just for a traffic stop.

Our local school has windows the full length of all classrooms on all floors. These would have to be bulletproof on the first floor at least.

Exit and scatter might be a better idea for our school, yours may be different.

All in all there is no good solution.

might be to give grants to local school districts for sound security improvements, so long as the money isn't all spent on the expensive surveillance systems Homeland Security is so fond of.

characteristic of actually being effective.

The Fort Hood shooting took place in a medical processing building. It took 10 minutes before the first armed civilian police officers to show up and confront the shooter. Yes there were soldiers there, however they were not armed.

you could have a dozen unarmed Ninjas and a slow fat man with automatic weapons and the outcome would be fairly predictable.

If he were talking about protecting people he would be insane but he's not.
His sole purpose is to sell more guns. More and more guns means more and more profit.

He has no interest in protecting people and he doesn't care one whit about who dies.
It's not an issue.
He is out to get more guns sold so demanding more armed guards serves that purpose very well.

It's a mistake to assume that these people have hearts and are interested in protecting others.
They have nothing but filthy greenbacks thumping in their chest.

And in Japan, today, or Canada, Germany, Ireland, France, Norway, etc. , where guns are illegal or highly controlled, their national conversation is centering on..... ?

Food distribution? Better healthcare? Even more green energy? Wi-Fi access?

America has to babysit gun nuts humping their fear.