Routine Shootings at US Schools and Universities Megathread.

[Admiral Yi]

Yes?

ossum?

[dps]

We never had lockdown drills when I was a kid. Only fire drills.

Lots of things were different. It was just a more innocent or more naïve time - I once brought a crossbow in to grade 6 for show-and-tell; the teachers loved it, and the whole class trooped out to the yard for an officially encouraged shooting demo. Nowadays, a kid doing that would probably end up in handcuffs. 

We never had any lockdown drills, and it's probably a good thing we didn't.  We would have probably rioted.

Lockdowns are a stupid idea anyway.  "Let's keep the students and teachers trapped in the building with the gunman instead of letting them run away from him".  Just fucking brilliant.

Do you know they’re a stupid idea, or do you think they are?

Didn't mean to necro the thread, but I thought I'd posted a response to this.  Yes, I know that staying in a building with an active shooter is a bad idea, unless you're in a secure area the perp can't enter or fire into (and almost any firearm WILL be able to put rounds through the internal walls of most public buildings).  If there's not a secure area, what you want to do is get as far away from the shooter as quickly as possible.

Now, placing a location on lockdown to preserve evidence and interview witnesses when there's no longer an active threat is a different story.

[DGuller]

We never had lockdown drills when I was a kid. Only fire drills.

Lots of things were different. It was just a more innocent or more naïve time - I once brought a crossbow in to grade 6 for show-and-tell; the teachers loved it, and the whole class trooped out to the yard for an officially encouraged shooting demo. Nowadays, a kid doing that would probably end up in handcuffs. 

We never had any lockdown drills, and it's probably a good thing we didn't.  We would have probably rioted.

Lockdowns are a stupid idea anyway.  "Let's keep the students and teachers trapped in the building with the gunman instead of letting them run away from him".  Just fucking brilliant.

Do you know they're a stupid idea, or do you think they are?

Didn't mean to necro the thread, but I thought I'd posted a response to this.  Yes, I know that staying in a building with an active shooter is a bad idea, unless you're in a secure area the perp can't enter or fire into (and almost any firearm WILL be able to put rounds through the internal walls of most public buildings).  If there's not a secure area, what you want to do is get as far away from the shooter as quickly as possible.

Now, placing a location on lockdown to preserve evidence and interview witnesses when there's no longer an active threat is a different story.

Do you know better than the people designing the protocols for such an event?  I'm not saying that experts are infallible, but your objection seems obvious enough that it must've occurred to them as well.

I'm not an expert either, but here is my layman train of thought.  How exactly are students supposed to exit the building during a shooting?  Teleport?  Usually you have to use the hallways to do that.  If the gunman is roaming inside the school building, what would be easier for him:  gun down the people running in panic in the hallway, or break into a barricaded classroom, one at a time?

[grumbler]

Do you know better than the people designing the protocols for such an event?  I'm not saying that experts are infallible, but your objection seems obvious enough that it must've occurred to them as well.

I'm not an expert either, but here is my layman train of thought.  How exactly are students supposed to exit the building during a shooting?  Teleport?  Usually you have to use the hallways to do that.  If the gunman is roaming inside the school building, what would be easier for him:  gun down the people running in panic in the hallway, or break into a barricaded classroom, one at a time?

Current best practice is to run.  Just had our briefing from the Sheriff's department.

[dps]

Do you know better than the people designing the protocols for such an event?  I'm not saying that experts are infallible, but your objection seems obvious enough that it must've occurred to them as well.

I'm not an expert either, but here is my layman train of thought.  How exactly are students supposed to exit the building during a shooting?  Teleport?  Usually you have to use the hallways to do that.  If the gunman is roaming inside the school building, what would be easier for him:  gun down the people running in panic in the hallway, or break into a barricaded classroom, one at a time?

Current best practice is to run.  Just had our briefing from the Sheriff's department.

Yep.  We've had training at work on how to deal with an active shooter, and the first rule is to try to get away. 

[DGuller]

Again, I'm no expert, but it seems like the kind of thing where there is no universal answer.  Obviously if you can run away without crossing paths with the shooter, you do that and don't even think about it.  It gets more complicated when you're trapped: do you hunker down and buy time, or do you make a run for it? 

Given that in Florida, the shooter pulled the fire alarm, he obviously thought that it would be more preferable for him if the students didn't hunker down in their classrooms.  If I were in the third floor classroom and my way out looked like this:



, I would still do what I was trained to do, but I'd be not that confident if that involved running out into that hallway with my classmates and making it virtually impossible for the shooter to miss with any shot he manages to get off.

[11B4V]

Fatal Funnel.

[Jacob]

Apparently there's a way the NRA helps reduce gun related injuries in the US:

Like clockwork, the National Rifle Association reduces gun injuries in the US for three days every year -- when it holds its annual convention.

Authors of a Harvard Medical School report published in the New England Journal of Medicine examined the "natural experiment" that occurs when about 80,000 NRA members hole up in a conference center. The finding: a 20 percent drop in injuries inflicted by the weapons compared to the same days of the week in the three weeks before and after the event.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/for-these-three-days-nra-reduces-gun-injuries-research-shows

[HVC]

you're think that so many gun nuts in one place there'd be more accidents

[grumbler]

you're think that so many gun nuts in one place there'd be more accidents

An armed convention is a polite convention.

[jimmy olsen]

1988 to 2018

[Monoriu]

Why CDC? 

[jimmy olsen]

Why CDC? 

Congress banned them on doing research on the effect of firearms on mortality or something like that IIRC.

[Admiral Yi]

The AIDS one doesn't make a bunch of sense either.

[Valmy]

The AIDS one doesn't make a bunch of sense either.

The FDA was conservative in releasing experimental AIDS drugs.