General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen I Was In School, We Had Fire Drills, Not Shooting Drills.
I was reading about the school shooting in New Mexico; about how the school acted quickly and efficiently to go into lockdown when it was announced that there was a shooter in the school. It was said that the faculty and students had practiced and drilled for such contingencies and that it was a requirement in most school districts now.
What has this country come to? I remember going to public school and having fire drills. We never conceived of such a thing as school shootings. How did such a thing as a gun culture ever evolve in our country? Gun violence in the modern population used to be something you'd never see outside of the early 20th century gangsters, the Mafia and gang violence. Now, we've got a casual culture of killings and killing sprees by individuals and no major mobilization is being done to address it. Politicians and the public railed and rallied against criminals like Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, the Mafia and the Crips and Bloods. The slaughter of our children in a place where they used to be safe is not given any more consideration than practice and drilling like you'd do for a fire.
Kaleva
(36,356 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)struggle4progress
(118,378 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)to remember Duck and Cover
Cleita
(75,480 posts)fire drills as if we could ever survive the bomb, if it fell.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)Cleita
(75,480 posts)That's why I don't believe the experts who say Fukushima is not polluting the ocean.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)tblue
(16,350 posts)It's been a year and I haven't received that yet. But it's horrifying that it's even needed. I just cannot understand how the gun lobby became the decider of public policy. What is a government for, if not to put public health and safety first? Why don't we just admit we are not a democracy anymore? We are governed by unelected leaders who put their profits above our welfare.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)to get their toadies out of elected office and replaced by true representatives who have the public interests of the majority in their actions.
FSogol
(45,540 posts)and gather everyone along a wall that cannot be viewed from the door window. (2 school systems near me have added blinds over the door windows.) The idea is to make the room look like your class is at the cafeteria, gym, or elsewhere.
Even if your school system isn't preparing for the worst, there should be emergency planners in your community who are. I would encourage you to contact them for advice and have them talk to your school board/administration.
B2G
(9,766 posts)The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)Folks seem to like to blame tools instead of looking for reasons why people use them in the way that they do.
Things have changed over the decades and it is not the number of guns (went down) so maybe, just maybe, the change is in people (but that is too hard to look at so folks will blame something else and try to control it).
B2G
(9,766 posts)AlinPA
(15,071 posts)SummerSnow
(12,608 posts)we also had two ladies at a desk when you enter the school. they were the 'security". No metal detectors etc. Life was so different then. I never felt scared going to school or thought someone was coming in to shoot us.
Bandit
(21,475 posts)It is the times we live in. More guns in society equate to more of those guns being shot toward people/children...America has gotten sick (both mentally and morally) and I see no change in sight..
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)the FBI got involved. Not only that, but during her senior year there was a young man who shot and killed himself in the school parking lot. That was a separate incident. I agree. The odds of a shooting is probably as good or better than a fire.
intheflow
(28,505 posts)I remember a lot of them around the time RFK and MLK were shot. They were basically fire drills, but for the eventuality of bombs. Where and when did you grow up, anyway?
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)In the early 70' s bomb threats were called in to the school frequently. When I was a nurse in the 80 s the same was true and we drilled on it as much as we did fire drills.
MineralMan
(146,336 posts)If you counted up all of the school shootings in a given year, and then did the math to find out what percentage of schools experienced one, the percentage would be very, very low. Way less than one percent, I'm sure.
But, all sorts of emergencies can occur at a school, so preparing for a wide range of emergency situations is a must. A school shooting situation is one kind of emergency, so specific measures if that occurs should be part of the emergency planning. But, it's just one of many situations that are emergencies that might occur.
An emergency plan should cover all possible emergencies with sets of actions that must be taken. In most emergencies, a similar or the same set of actions will work just fine, and that should be the main plan. But, a school shooting should be considered, with actions predetermined. But, other emergencies are far more likely to happen, so those should be the primary concerns of any emergency plan.
Fire, flood, storm, tornado, earthquake, and other emergency situations are far more likely. A shooting incident at a school is a rare thing, indeed, and will never occur in the vast, vast majority of schools.
MineralMan
(146,336 posts)Between 1996 through 2012, there were a total of 45 school shooting incidents.
In 2012, there were a total of seven.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/school-shooting-statistics/
Total number of K-12 schools in the USA: 132,656
http://www.edreform.com/2012/04/k-12-facts/
It's easy enough to do the math to see what the odds of a shooting incident occurring at a given school are. The probability is very, very low, indeed.
Other types of emergencies are far more common.
Skittles
(153,212 posts)our gun humping culture is now the norm
joeglow3
(6,228 posts)There were quite a few school shootings going back to 1900. However, media coverage has shot up and "if it bleeds, it leads."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#1990s
Schools cater to the paranoia of human nature.