Routine Shootings at US Schools and Universities Megathread.

[DGuller]

Did they have a SWAT team?  I thought they waited for the Border Patrol SWAT.

They should've specified that they'll only meet you if you're not currently committing a mass shooting.  They don't need that shit.

[grumbler]

So why did they have a SWAT unit then?

Graft and toys to play with.

Plus a lot of of perverse incentives, in all likelihood.  I think that I have mentioned before that my small town has one police officer but three cop cars, because state and federal matching funds wouldn't kick in until the town had bought one car, in which case the state and the feds each gave the town a matching cop car.  When you see that one car waiting off the side of the road to catch people speeding in the school zone there's less than a one in three chance the car is actually manned.  But you can't tell by looking at it because of the tinted windows.

[alfred russel]

Graft and toys to play with.

More seriously, it's hard to say.  Logic would suggest a town of 15,000 doesn't need a SWAT team.  OTOH if a basic function of every small town American PD is now the ability to storm a building and take out fully equipped and geared shooters, one could argue that every podunk hamlet from Maine to Guam needs one.

A lot of small towns use volunteer firefighters and volunteer EMS. Why not volunteer SWAT teams? Thanks to our forever war policies the past few decades, small towns have plenty of combat veterans to call upon.

[Admiral Yi]

The Tulsa shooter was pissed at his doctor for not fixing his back pain.

Just heard on NPR about some shooting at a funeral, Milwaukee I think.  Lively week.

[Zanza]

Based on statistics, every week is a lively week for mass shootings.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2022

[Josquius]

Graft and toys to play with.

More seriously, it's hard to say.  Logic would suggest a town of 15,000 doesn't need a SWAT team.  OTOH if a basic function of every small town American PD is now the ability to storm a building and take out fully equipped and geared shooters, one could argue that every podunk hamlet from Maine to Guam needs one.

A lot of small towns use volunteer firefighters and volunteer EMS. Why not volunteer SWAT teams? Thanks to our forever war policies the past few decades, small towns have plenty of combat veterans to call upon.

This actually doesn't seem such a mad idea in theory.
Gives the gun nuts some form of leadership and control (choosing the right person will be key), and the chances of them actually being needed is really low (again provided the police keep a sane level of time to call the swat)

[Berkut]

That is not a mad idea, it is fucking insane.

*Most* gun nuts are people you don't want around a gun to begin with. Well, maybe not most, but plenty of them.

Do you know how many Kyle Rittenhouses are wandering around out there now, just itching for a chance to use their shiny assault rifle, to be the "good guy with the gun"?

Giving them some imprint of authority and legitimacy is a fucking horrific idea.

[The Minsky Moment]

Don't be so pessimistic berkut.  Modern citizen militias have a fantastic track record, from Beirut to rural Colombia to 1990s Bosnia.

I think it could work great in underpopulated areas like the arid regions of Texas.  IIRC there was a documentary not the long ago about such an effort, I think in the Australian bush.  A citizen leader named Joe was able to control crime and give restless young men in the area a sense of purpose through being "witnessed"  Sadly the promising experiment was brought to a premature end by a band of woke feminists.

[Berkut]

Well, this is interesting, in light of the conversations me and grumbler had:

The officers who finally breached the locked classrooms with a janitor's key were not a formal tactical unit, according to a person briefed on the response. The officers, including specially trained Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and a sheriff's deputy, formed an ad hoc group on their own and gathered in the hallway outside the classroom, a tense space where they said there appeared to be no chain of command.

They were done waiting for permission, one of them said, according to the person, before they moved toward the classroom where the gunman waited. They continued even after one of them heard a command crackling in his earpiece: Do not breach

They entered the room and killed the gunman.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/us/uvalde-police-response.html

[Josquius]

That is not a mad idea, it is fucking insane.

*Most* gun nuts are people you don't want around a gun to begin with. Well, maybe not most, but plenty of them.

Do you know how many Kyle Rittenhouses are wandering around out there now, just itching for a chance to use their shiny assault rifle, to be the "good guy with the gun"?

Giving them some imprint of authority and legitimacy is a fucking horrific idea.

Whose talking about giving them authority?
Put a sane cop in charge of the volunteer SWAT and you have them taking orders against their impulses. Basically just adding oversight to already existing militas.

[Berkut]

More from that article:

In the hallway outside the classrooms, a throng of heavily armed law enforcement officers anxiously awaited instructions. But frustrations were growing, particularly among members of a Border Patrol tactical unit, according to the person who was briefed on the team's response.

"No one entity or individual seemed to have control of the scene," the person said. "It was chaos."

The sense of frustration among tactical team members was corroborated by two officials familiar with their debriefing.

After more than an hour, the ad hoc group of officers who had arrived ready to attack the gunman was growing impatient, and decided to move in.

One of the members — equipped with an earpiece and small microphone — quietly announced over the radio that the group was preparing to go into the classrooms. At that point a voice responded, telling them not to breach the doors.

They ignored the directive.

As the agents entered, the gunman appeared to be ready for them, the person said. He fired. They fired back, with at least one bullet striking him in the head. A bullet fragment also grazed the head of one of the Border Patrol agents.

As soon as the agents announced over the radio that the gunman had been killed, attention turned to treating the wounded. The agents helped set up a triage system, as more officers and emergency medical workers descended on the classrooms, trying to stabilize the children who had been shot but were still alive. At one point during the siege, one of the two children who called 911 had reported that at least eight or nine of the children in the two classrooms were still alive.

Khloie and her surviving classmates were rushed from the classroom. The bodies of 19 children were recovered, along with those of the two teachers. Seventeen people, including a third teacher, were wounded.

"I don't understand why somebody did not go in," said Khloie's mother, Jamie Torres. Children and teachers would have still been shot, she said, "but it would have been way less than 21."

That is simply awful. Enraging. Just....impossible to explain.

[Berkut]

That is not a mad idea, it is fucking insane.

*Most* gun nuts are people you don't want around a gun to begin with. Well, maybe not most, but plenty of them.

Do you know how many Kyle Rittenhouses are wandering around out there now, just itching for a chance to use their shiny assault rifle, to be the "good guy with the gun"?

Giving them some imprint of authority and legitimacy is a fucking horrific idea.

Whose talking about giving them authority?
Put a sane cop in charge of the volunteer SWAT and you have them taking orders against their impulses. Basically just adding oversight to already existing militas.

If they are members of a fucking tactical police response unit, that is definitely giving them authority.

Who is in charge when the "sane cop" isn't around?

Jesus, you are suggesting giving Dwight an assault rifle, body armor, and a mission to use them to get the bad guys.

This might be the worst idea ever proposed on Languish.

[alfred russel]

That is not a mad idea, it is fucking insane.

FYI, mad and insane are synonyms.

Also, it is worth remembering that it is something the founding fathers would have been familiar with--slave patrols which were often connected to militias functioned as a kind of early police force in the early republic. These forces often had some military experience or training and frequently weren't paid.

[Josquius]

That is not a mad idea, it is fucking insane.

*Most* gun nuts are people you don't want around a gun to begin with. Well, maybe not most, but plenty of them.

Do you know how many Kyle Rittenhouses are wandering around out there now, just itching for a chance to use their shiny assault rifle, to be the "good guy with the gun"?

Giving them some imprint of authority and legitimacy is a fucking horrific idea.

Whose talking about giving them authority?
Put a sane cop in charge of the volunteer SWAT and you have them taking orders against their impulses. Basically just adding oversight to already existing militas.

If they are members of a fucking tactical police response unit, that is definitely giving them authority.

Who is in charge when the "sane cop" isn't around?

Jesus, you are suggesting giving Dwight an assault rifle, body armor, and a mission to use them to get the bad guys.

This might be the worst idea ever proposed on Languish.

No, its telling Dwight and co who on weekends play army games in the woods that they can be official volunteer SWAT troops if they pay attention to Officer Johanson and do nothing to bring the police into disrepute. If they're extra good boys maybe they'll even get a volunteer SWAT t-shirt.

Maybe, just maybe, they might be called upon some theoretical day in the future when there's a lunatic with a gun on the loose. But probably not.

[Berkut]

OK, not going to comment further. It's an absolutely terrible idea.